Ripoll Monastery

Santa Maria de Ripoll was founded in 879 by Wilfred the Hairy, the count from whom the Catalan dynasty descends, and it became the intellectual centre of the region: its scriptorium produced manuscripts that transmitted Arabic mathematical and astronomical knowledge into Christian Europe, and Gerbert of Aurillac, later Pope Sylvester II, studied in this area. The west portal, carved in the twelfth century, covers the whole facade with registers of sculpture, scenes from Kings, Exodus, the Apocalypse and the labours of the months, and is conventionally called the stone bible of Ripoll. The building was burned in 1835 and rebuilt in the 1880s, so much is restoration, but the portal and the cloister survive from the medieval church.

What you actually see

• The carved portal - a full facade of twelfth-century biblical sculpture.
• The cloister - two storeys of carved capitals surviving the fire.
• The scriptorium story - the monastery's role in transmitting knowledge.
• The rebuilt church - a nineteenth-century reconstruction after 1835.

When to go

April to June and September to November; the Ripolles is cold in winter with snow possible. The monastery keeps a midday closure and shorter winter hours.

Honest expectations

The church interior is nineteenth-century rebuilding rather than medieval. The portal is protected by a glass porch that complicates viewing and photography. Ripoll is a small industrial town with limited other draws.

Nearby

Sant Joan de les Abadesses lies east; Vall de Nuria and the Pyrenees are north.