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Founding of the Poblet monastery and the royal pantheon

Vimbodí i Poblet, Conca de Barberà, Tarragona

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Spain › Catalonia › Tarragona › Conca de Barberà › Vimbodí i Poblet › Founding of the Poblet monastery and the royal pantheon

Founding of the Poblet monastery and the royal pantheon

Historical milestone · Vimbodí i Poblet, Conca de Barberà, Tarragona

Image of Vimbodí i Poblet, not of the place itself.

Poblet Monastery, at the foot of the Prades mountains, in the Conca de Barberà, is the largest inhabited monastic complex in Europe and one of the most important on the continent. Ramon Berenguer IV granted these lands in 1151 to Cistercian monks who had come from Fontfroide, who founded the monastery around 1150. Peter the Ceremonious later turned it, during the 14th and 15th centuries, into the pantheon of the kings of the Crown of Aragon, whose sepulchres are lined up above the transept arch, though it also holds the tombs of earlier monarchs and various noble lineages. It was declared Monumento Nacional (Spain's highest heritage protection designation at the time) in 1921, after a visit by Alfonso XIII, and a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1991.

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Photo: Jordi D. A. from Barcelona, Catalan Lands (CC BY-SA 2.0)

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