One of the great things to do in Spain is drive through the countryside and just stop at historical places of beauty.  Old Roman ruins, viaducts, castles and of course…. medieval monsastaries!  About an hour out of Barcelona, we hung a right at Tarragona and headed up into the mountains to visit one of the oldest and largest Cisterian Monasteries, The Monastery of Santa Maria de Poblet (Vimbodi).

In the middle of the 12th Century the Count of Barcelona conquered the last Muslim stronghold and started repopulating this rich land with Christians.  This coincided with the expansion of the Cistercian Order, a new monastic order, who wanted to return to the Rule of Saint Benedict. The monks discovered abundant, rich farmland, stone and water and natural resources and started to build under the protection of the Crown.   The Monastery of Poblet is one of the spirituality centres in Catalonia and, at the same time, it holds one of the most important jewels of the religious architecture in the country, and was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1991.

It was an absolutely amazing place!  You could almost sense that you were back in time and we wondered about all of the thousands of people who had lived and worked within these walls over the centuries!  So much history here!!!