Santa Maria de Montsió Monastery

The Monastery of Santa Maria de Montsió is currently home to the  enclosed Community  of Dominican Nuns. The congregation was founded in 1347, and having relocated on several occasions, moved into its current home in in 1948.

The founding of the monastery began on the initiative of Maria of Aragon, the daughter of King Jaume II, the Just, who became a widow at the age of 20 and joined the Sixena convent. She later made contact with the order of preachers and received a licence to found a community of Dominican nuns in Barcelona. In 1936 they left the monastery in Barcelona and bought a property in Esplugues with a Modernist tower which had been refurbished in 1915 by the renowned architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner. The property had a kitchen garden, a woodland and a well. In 1948 the Gothic cloister was relocated stone by stone from Barcelona to Esplugues, and a new church was built.

The monastery is home to relics commemorating the famous victory of the Battle of Lepanto (1571 A.D.): a painting of the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child (dating from the second half of the 16th century), a pennant from the mast of the Grand Turk's galley and four standards.

One notable feature of the visible facade of the cloister is the addition of a tribune with pointed brickwork arches and ceramic tiles. The other facade, visible from the street where the church stands, is noted for the openings in various forms distributed along the wall, and a gallery where the ornate brickwork artistically reflects its structure.