The best walks and hikes around L'Espluga Calba

Along with the monasteries of Poblet and Santes Creus, this is one of the three pearls of Gothic architecture in Catalonia. You won't be disappointed.

very pretty town

Beautiful medieval monastery from the Cistercian era, still inhabited by nuns.

The monastery of Santa María de Vallbona is a female Cistercian abbey founded in the 11th century and built in a mixture of Romanesque and Gothic styles. Together with the Poblet and Santes Creus monasteries, it forms the Cistercian Route.

Belonging to the district of Vallbona de les Monges, Montblanquet is a small town in the Sierra del Tallat, on the border between the counties of Conca de Barberà and El Urgell. Among its heritage stands out the church of Sant Andreu de Montblanquet, from the 13th century, with a single nave and Cistercian inspiration. The old washrooms, the communal oven and a couple of fountains are also preserved. In the Plaza Mayor there is a stamp for the Ruta del Cister (a cupboard inside which there is a stamp for the route).

The Tallat sanctuary appears in records as early as the 11th century, where a defense tower was located that took advantage of the magnificent views over the l'Urgell, Sagarra and Conca de Barberà regions. In the middle of the 14th century, a church was established as a result of the popular initiative of the residents of Rocallaura, and in 1475 it is said that a wooden carving of a Virgin Mary appeared to a shepherd. Legend has it that despite repeated attempts to move the carving, it returned to the place where the sanctuary is now, so they decided to leave it here. Then began a period of splendor for the sanctuary, with numerous reforms during the 15th and 16th centuries, some promoted by Fernando el Católico himself, who is said to have spent the night with Queen Isabella la Católica in 1493. By order of the king, it became in the priory of nearby Poblet, and a group of monks from the Cistercian order settled there. With the confiscation of Mendizabal in the first half of the 19th century, the monks abandoned the priory, and after the subsequent looting and destruction of the enclosure, the sanctuary remained abandoned until 1970 when a private association acquired the remains and took charge of their restoration and custody.

The monastery of Santa María de Vallbona is the most important female Cistercian monastery in Catalonia. It has maintained its monastic activity uninterruptedly for more than 800 years. Its beginnings, at the beginning of the 12th century, were as a mixed group of hermits who followed the Rule of Sant Benet, later converted into monastics, under the pastoral staff of its founder, Ramón de Vallbona. In 1175 the monks moved to Montsant, leaving the female monastic community in Vallbona, which joined the Cistercian order. The monastery is made up of the temple, presided over by the Mare de Déu del cor, in the usual sober and slightly ornamented style of the order, and by the trapezoidal-shaped cloister, and the other dependencies (chapter house, the archive and the old pharmacy).

Nice and quiet town where you can visit emblematic places and visit the monastery.