Barcelona Guide
The northern suburbs
Monestir de Pedralbes
Address: At the end of Avinguda Pedralbes
Opening time: Tues– Sat 10am–2pm, June– Sept 10am–5pm, Sun & hols 10am–3pm
Price: Combined ticket with City History Museum €6, free first Sun of the month
Telephone: 932 563 434
Website: www.museuhistoria.bcn.cat
The Gothic Monestir de Pedralbes is reached up a cobbled street that passes through a small archway set back from the road. Founded in 1326 for the nuns of the Order of St Clare, this is, in effect, an entire monastic village preserved on the outskirts of the city, within medieval walls and gateways that completely shut out the noise and clamour of the twenty-first century.
It took the medieval craftsmen a little over a year to prepare Pedralbes (from the Latin petras albas, "white stones") for its first community of nuns. The speed of the initial construction and the subsequent uninterrupted habitation by the Order helps explain the extreme architectural harmony. After 600 years of isolation the monastery was sequestered by the Generalitat during the Civil War and it opened as a museum in 1983.
The cloisters in particular are the finest in the city, built on three levels and adorned by the slenderest of columns, with the only sound the tinkling water from the fountain. Rooms opening off the cloisters give a clear impression of convent life, from the chapter house and austere refectory to a fully equipped kitchen and infirmary. Alcoves and day cells display restored frescoes, religious artefacts, furniture and utensils, while the nuns' former dormitory – now given a black marble floor and soaring oak-beamed ceiling – holds rarer treasures. The monastery acquired valuable art and other possessions over the centuries – including pieces of Gothic furniture claimed to be part of the founding queen's endowment. There are paintings by Flemish artists, an impressive series of so-called "factitious" altarpieces of the sixteenth century (made up of sections of different style and provenance) and some outstanding illuminated choir books.
The adjacent church (usually 11am–1pm & 5–8pm) is a simple, single-naved structure, which retains some of its original fourteenth-century stained glass. In the chancel, the foundation's sponsor, Elisenda de Montcada, wife of Jaume II, lies in a superb carved marble tomb. Widowed in 1327, six months after the inauguration of the monastery, Elisenda retired to an adjacent palace, where she lived until her death in 1364.