Logbook · 22 places

Cave of Sant Ignasi

Manresa, Bages, Barcelona

1 Villages · 14 Monuments · 1 Nature · 2 Activities · 1 Curiosities · 3 Historical milestones

Spain › Catalonia › Barcelona › Bages › Manresa › Cave of Sant Ignasi

Cave of Sant Ignasi

Nature · Manresa, Bages, Barcelona

The Cova de Sant Ignasi, in Manresa (Bages), is a complex of a Baroque church and a classicist building around the rock shelter where, according to tradition, Ignatius of Loyola withdrew to pray between March 1522 and February 1523, on returning from his pilgrimage to Montserrat, and where he wrote the essentials of the Spiritual Exercises. Next to the cave, closed off with a door since the late 16th century, a chapel dedicated to the saint was built in 1603, and at the end of the 17th century the Manresa sculptors Joan and Francesc Grau and their disciple Josep Sunyer decorated it with an alabaster and marble altarpiece. The present church, by the architect Josep Morató, was built between 1759 and 1763; together with the Pont Vell and the Seu it forms one of the classic images of the entrance to Manresa.

Photo: Josep Renalias (CC BY-SA 2.5)

What to see and do in Manresa