Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
various languages, but nothing quietens the line which waits to kiss the image's hands and
feet.
The best time to visit the basilica is when Montserrat's world-famous
boys' choir
sings.
The boys belong to the Escolania, a choral school established in the fourteenth century and
unchanged in musical style since its foundation.
Museu de Montserrat
MuseudeMontserrat
Mon-Fri10am-5.30pm,Sat&Sun10am-5.45pm(June-Auguntil6.45pm)•€7•
Espai
Audiovisual
Mon-Fri 9am-5.30pm, Sat & Sun 9am-6.45pm • €6
The
Museu de Montserrat
presents a few archeological finds brought back by travelling
monks, together with paintings and sculpture dating from as early as the thirteenth century,
including works by Old Masters, French Impressionists and Catalan
modernistas
. There's
also a collection of Byzantine icons, though other religious items are in short supply, as most
of the monastery's valuables were carried off by Napoleon's troops who sacked the complex
in 1811. For more on the history, and to learn something of the life of a Benedictine commu-
nity, visit the freshly renovated
Espai Audiovisual
, near the information office.
Mountain walks
Funicular departures vary by season, but mostly every 20min, 10am-5pm • Santa Cova €3.40 return, Sant Joan
€8.45 return, combination ticket €9.50
Following the mountain tracks to the nearby caves and hermitages, you can contemplate Go-
ethe's observation of 1816: “Nowhere but in his own Montserrat will a man find happiness
and peace.” The going is pretty good on all the tracks and the signposting is clear, but you do
need to remember that you're on a mountain - take a bottle of water and keep away from the
edges. Two separate funiculars run from points close to the cable-car station, and a map with
walking notes is available from the Montserrat tourist office.
One funicular drops to the path for
Santa Cova
, a seventeenth-century chapel built where
the Moreneta icon is said to have been found. It's an easy walk there and back, which takes
less than an hour.
The other funicular rises steeply to the hermitage of
Sant Joan
, from where it's a tougher
45-minute walk to the
Sant Jeroni
hermitage, and another fifteen minutes to the Sant Jeroni
summit at 1236m. This is an excellent place to watch for peregrines, crag martins and black
redstarts; in summer you may also spot alpine swifts, while Iberian wall lizards emerge from
the crevices to bask on the rockfaces. Several other walks are also possible from the Sant
Joan funicular, perhaps the nicest being the 45-minute circuit around the ridge that leads all
the way back down to the monastery.
