Monasterio de El Paular: A Gothic Carthusian Monastery in Spain
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- Spain
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Crown of Castile, Spanish
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Monastery
On this page21 sections
History
Monasterio de El Paular is a Gothic Carthusian monastery in Spain, founded in 1390 at Rascafría in the Lozoya Valley on the Madrid-facing side of the Sierra de Guadarrama. It was the first Carthusian foundation in Castile and remained a monastery of the contemplative Catholic order, whose members emphasize solitary religious life, until the community was expelled in 1835.
Foundation and royal patronage
Henry II of Castile ordered the foundation beside an existing hermitage dedicated to Santa María de El Paular. He selected the location and indicated its precise position to his son, the future John I of Castile. Tradition connects the king’s choice of the Carthusian order with a campaign in France during which his army had burned a Carthusian monastery. A charterhouse is a Carthusian monastery, and El Paular became the order’s first establishment in Castile.
The project grew over several centuries and was conceived as a complex of monastic buildings, a church, and a palace for royal use. Rodrigo Alfonso contributed to the construction, while the Moorish architect Abderrahman designed the Gothic-Mudejar refectory, a dining hall that combines Christian forms with Islamic-derived techniques and ornament developed in medieval Spain. Juan Guas created the church atrium, entrance portal, and monks’ cloister. Juan and Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón also worked at El Paular in the late fifteenth century.
The church reached its final form during the reign of Isabella I of Castile, known as Isabella the Catholic. The monastery subsequently became one of the most powerful Carthusian houses in Castile. Its royal associations were also expressed in the palace buildings, including a small adjacent palace constructed in 1403 under Rodrigo Alfonso.
Economic influence in the Lozoya Valley
The Carthusian community managed cultivated land and craft workshops beside the monastery. From the fifteenth through the nineteenth century, its agricultural, industrial, and commercial activities affected much of the Lozoya Valley. These activities included fishing in the Lozoya River, forestry, sheep raising, and the operation of two water-powered mills, one for sawing wood and another for making paper.
The monastery also maintained economic centers at Getafe and Talamanca de Jarama. In the seventeenth century, forty workers were employed at the paper mill. Its paper was used for the first edition of Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote, published in 1604. The monastery therefore functioned not only as a religious house but also as an extensive economic institution connected with production and trade beyond its immediate valley.
Dissolution, dispersal, and protection
El Paular was directly affected by the Mendizábal confiscation of 1835, a Spanish state program that dissolved religious communities and nationalized or sold much of their property. The Carthusians were expelled, and many artworks, church altarpieces, and thousands of books from the library were lost or dispersed.
In 1876, the Spanish government declared El Paular a National Monument, a measure that probably prevented the complex from falling into complete ruin. The site is now state-owned and protected as a monument of cultural interest. Its later history has consequently combined religious use, cultural activity, and state-supported preservation.
Artists, writers, and mountain culture
In 1918, the Directorate-General of Fine Arts established the El Paular School of Painters. The initiative supported artists’ summer stays in former monastic cells. The monastery also became associated with the scientific and mountaineering activities of the Free Institution of Education, a Spanish educational and cultural movement founded in 1876 that promoted secular and innovative education.
In this intellectual setting, the Royal Spanish Mountaineering Society Peñalara was founded in 1913. The association, devoted to mountaineering and related cultural activities, used the monastery’s truncated tower as its emblem. El Paular also attracted writers. Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, an eighteenth-century Spanish writer, jurist, and Enlightenment reformer, stayed there and wrote Epistle of El Paular. Pío Baroja later drew on the monastery in The Way of Perfection and in poems included in Songs of the Suburb.
War damage and Benedictine administration
During the Spanish Civil War, republican troops occupied Rascafría and El Paular. The church in Rascafría was burned, and the remaining contents of the charterhouse were damaged or destroyed. The stone tomb of Melchor de Moscoso, bishop of Segovia until his death in 1632, was opened and looted.
In 1954, the government transferred the monastery in usufruct to the Benedictine order because the Carthusians could no longer take charge of it. Usufruct is the legal right to use and benefit from property owned by another party without acquiring full ownership. Twelve monks from Valvanera Abbey arrived, and the monastery began a continuing restoration program intended to make El Paular a center of religious and cultural activity. A Benedictine community continues to maintain part of the former monastery.
The Benedictines established a distillery for monastic liqueurs and a cheese factory using milk from cattle in the Lozoya Valley. The palace was later converted into a hotel operated for many years by the Sheraton chain, although that operation closed in 2014. The monastery and its surroundings remain associated with the religious and cultural activity of the Benedictine community.
Restoration of the complex and the Carducho cycle
Since the 1996 Master Plan for Comprehensive Intervention, the Ministry of Culture and the Community of Madrid have undertaken major restoration and archaeological research. The work addressed problems affecting the complex’s physical structure, improved its function, and restored or enhanced important movable and architectural elements. El Paular is also included in the National Cultural Landscape Plan for the El Paular Valley.
One of the most extensive conservation projects concerned the Carthusian painting cycle commissioned by Prior Juan de Baeza from Vicente Carducho. Carducho painted the series between 1626 and 1632. After the confiscation of 1835, the paintings were removed and distributed among museums and institutions. Fifty-two survived, while two were burned during the Civil War in Tortosa, where they had been deposited.
The fifty-two surviving works were restored over six years, with the project completed in 2006. After the cloister itself was restored and equipped with climate control, the paintings returned to their original location in the summer of 2011. Their conservation re-established an important part of the monastery’s artistic and religious setting.
Remains
Layout and Gothic buildings
El Paular is a Gothic complex set in the mountainous Lozoya Valley. Its original plan brought together three principal elements: the monastic buildings, the church, and a royal palace. Mountains rising above 2,000 meters surround the complex, while deciduous vegetation, including oaks, ash trees, and poplars, forms part of its setting. Opposite the monastery are the arboretum named for Francisco Giner de los Ríos and the Bridge of Forgiveness over the Lozoya River.
Hermitage and palace
The hermitage beside which the monastery was founded survives as the Chapel of Our Lady of Montserrat, its later name. The palace entrance to the Ave Maria courtyard was made by Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón. A small adjoining palace was built in 1403 under Rodrigo Alfonso, preserving the royal component of the original plan.
Church and cloister
The church is the most prominent part of the complex. Its iron screen, made by the Carthusian monk Francisco de Salamanca, separates the monks’ choir from the nave and is regarded as a masterpiece of its type. The walnut choir stalls were carved in the sixteenth century by Bartolomé Fernández, who also made the choir stalls of El Parral Monastery in Segovia. They were transferred to the Basilica of San Francisco el Grande in Madrid in 1883 and returned to El Paular in 2003.
The monks’ cloister, created by Juan Guas, contains a characteristic octagonal pavilion with a fountain inside. It originally held fifty-four large paintings by Vicente Carducho, one in each opening. The cycle presents the life of Bruno of Cologne, founder of the Carthusian order, and the history of the order. Each of the fifty-two surviving half-lunette canvases is approximately 3.45 by 3.15 meters. A half-lunette is a semicircular painting designed to fit beneath a rounded arch or within a semicircular opening.
Carducho conceived the paintings as mural works fastened to wooden boarding. After their removal during the confiscation, they were mounted on rectangular frames at the Convent of La Trinidad. Painted additions in the upper corners altered their original semicircular format. The restoration removed those additions and recovered the original shape before the canvases were returned to the cloister.
Church furnishings and sculpture
High altarpiece
The late-fifteenth-century high altarpiece is made of polychrome alabaster and presents seventeen biblical scenes in detailed relief. It has been attributed either to craftsmen in Genoa, from where John II of Castile was said to have brought it, or to artists from Juan Guas’s school working at El Paular during the 1490s. Partly worked alabaster fragments found in the Matalobos courtyard during later works support the second possibility. The altarpiece remains in excellent condition and has undergone careful cleaning.
Later church additions
Two large paintings by Luis Feito were installed in the church to separate the nave from the areas formerly reserved for monks and lay brothers. Lay brothers were non-ordained male members of the community who traditionally performed practical work while sharing in monastic religious life.
Baroque sacred spaces
Tabernacle Chapel
The Tabernacle Chapel and its tabernacle form a Baroque ensemble begun in 1718 by remodeling an older octagonal chapel used for exposition and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. The project was designed by Francisco Hurtado Izquierdo. The adjoining chapel is octagonal and contains four smaller chapels and three altars. Its sculptures represent Saints Catherine, Agatha, John, Lucy, and Agnes, together with the Carthusian saints Bruno of Cologne, Nicholas Albergati, Hugh of Lincoln, and Anthelm. Most were made by Pedro Duque y Cornejo and commissioned on 20 May 1725; the remainder were made by Pedro Alonso de los Ríos.
Paintings in the ensemble were executed in 1723 by Antonio Palomino, although only a few remain. The surviving works form part of the chapel’s later decorative history alongside its sculpture and marble architecture.
Transparente
The tabernacle, or Transparente, is a hexagonal structure containing a monumental tabernacle built in 1724 from colored marble quarried at Cabra, Priego de Córdoba, Granada, and the mountains of Córdoba. A Transparente is an architectural arrangement intended to illuminate and visually emphasize a sacred altar or sacrament.
The tabernacle formerly held a large Baroque silver monstrance weighing twenty-four arrobas. A monstrance is a liturgical vessel used to display the consecrated Eucharistic host. The vessel was made by Pedrajas, a goldsmith from Córdoba, and probably disappeared during the Peninsular War.
Chapter house and refectory
Chapter house
The rectangular chapter house is covered by three bays of pointed-rib vaulting. Its eighteenth-century restoration added a false entablature, a horizontal architectural band, decorated with polychrome angels and fruits, as well as a Castilian coat of arms on the western wall.
The room contains a Baroque altarpiece attributed to José de la Torre, although some attributions identify Churriguera. It has six twisted Solomonic columns, putti, and abundant vegetal ornament. Solomonic columns are spiral columns commonly used in Baroque architecture. A dramatic Crucifixion occupies the upper center. A statue of Saint Bruno formerly stood over the altarpiece and is now in the nearby church of Rascafría. Saints Hugh and Anthelm remain in their niches, while the central niche contains an image of the Immaculate Conception formerly placed above the arch separating the brothers’ and monks’ choirs in the main church.
Refectory
The Gothic refectory contains a Mudejar pulpit and is dominated by a fifteenth-century wooden Calvary. Flying angels gather Christ’s blood in chalices, while the painted background, showing a heavenly Jerusalem, dates from the seventeenth century. Beneath the Calvary hangs a 1634 painting by Eugenio Orozco depicting the Last Supper. The work is held at El Paular on deposit from the Cerralbo Museum and copies Titian’s composition for the refectory of El Escorial.
Industrial and landscape remains
The former paper mill site retains ponds, water intakes, and channels that supplied the mills. These remains lie beside a poplar grove extending toward the eighteenth-century Bridge of Forgiveness over the Lozoya River. They preserve the physical infrastructure of the monastery’s paper-making activity and its connection with the valley’s water system.
The former Women’s Section hostel, built near the paper mill around 1950, survives as ruins. Together with the mill remains, the surrounding vegetation, the arboretum, and the bridge, it forms part of the wider landscape associated with El Paular’s religious, economic, and cultural history.
