Royal Monastery of San Juan de la Peña

If something Spain it's full of churches and monasteries, isn't it? Well in Aragon we find this one that we see in the photograph: the Royal Monastery of San Juan de la Peña, a beautiful Aragonese monastery.

This monastery is really particular because of where it is located and because there are also many Aragonese kings buried in it. Let's get to know it together.

Royal Monastery of San Juan de la Peña

As I said above is in Aragon, one of the autonomous communities of Spain, a historic kingdom that spans the Iberian Sierras, the Ebro valley and the Pyrenees. It is in the north of the country and borders France internationally.

The monastery is in Botaya, a small town in the municipality of Jaca, in the Aragonese province of Huesca. Knew to be the most important monastery in all of Aragon during the high period of the Middle Ages and that is why guards the tombs of various kings.

But what are its origins? Well there is always some devotee, faithful or apparition in question. In this case the legend It says that a noble named Voto or Oto was hunting in these lands when he saw a deer. He chased him and in that pursuit he fell off a cliff but miraculously and mysteriously neither he nor his horse were injured. Rather, they laid gently on solid ground.

There, at the bottom of the precipice, he saw a cave and inside he found the body of a hermit named Juan de Atarés. Amazed and impressed by the experience, he returned to Zaragoza, sold his possessions, convinced his brother to go with him and together they ended up being the new hermits of the cave. Later they witnessed, together with the Christian soldiers, the appointment of Garcí Ximénez as caudillo, the reconquest of the lands by Muslim hands and the cross set on fire on the holm oak of Sobrarbe.

But beyond the legend, specifically, the most important works with which the monastery began began in 1026 by orders of Sancho el Mayor, king of Pamplona from 1004 until his death in 1035. Years later another king, Sancho Ramírez, handed him over to the order of the Cluniac monks and begins to take the current form. Unfortunately not all those buildings reached our days but it is enough to see what it was and is a marvel.

The set of monastic buildings it's under a huge rock so it forms a very homogeneous postcard. Inside the monastery there are beautiful corners such as the pre-romanesque church, paintings of San Damiano and San Cosme which are from the XNUMXth century and obviously the Royal Pantheon, Pantheon of Nobles. There is also the Romanesque cloister, the Gothic chapel of San Victorián and the consecrated church of the year 1094.

The kickoff was given by Sancho el Mayor and thus, during the following century the monastery grew, expanded with new constructions and the Aragonese kings began to choose it as their final resting place with which it began to have more prestige and obviously, more wealth donated by the aristocracy itself. In any case, the importance of the monastery had its ups and downs in subsequent centuries and many donations stopped coming and some patrimonies were also lost, debts were added, there were fires and eventual deterioration.

Precisely, a fire in 1675 that lasted three whole days forced the construction of a new monastery since the original had been uninhabitable. The new construction was built on the Llano de San Indalecio, a meadow on a huge rock. The works continued until the XNUMXth century and there were several people in charge, but it is admitted that the most important for the character of the place was the architect from Zaragoza Miguel Ximenez.

The result is a symmetrical set, with many cloisters and a very rational organization of the space. The baroque style shines on the façade of the church, with its exaggerated plant decoration and the figure of three important saints, San Indalecio, San Juan Bautista and San Benito. The latter is the founding saint of the monastic order that was professed here.

Among the outstanding events that have it as a stage is the fact that here, On March 22, 1071, the Roman liturgical rite was introduced for the first time in the Iberian Peninsula, typical of the church of the West. In other words, the Hispano-Visigothic rite ended here and the Aragonese church finally adjusted to the Pope.

Around 1835 the monks left the monastery and then, without care, everything started to deteriorate. In the 50s of the XNUMXth century, the postcard was quite bleak and only after a reconstruction program the Aragon government managed to restore its shine.

Today the Royal New Monastery of San Juan de la Peña operates the Interpretation Center of the Kingdom of Aragón, a inn and Interpretation Center of the Monastery of San Juan de la Peña. And you must know all three.

El Monastery Interpretation Center It is the must see as the offer is fantastic. The visitor wanders through a very original structure, set up inside the monastery, on a glass floor that allows to see what the monastery was like before and the different stages it lived through: the refectory, the cellar, the kitchen, the utility rooms or the pantry. . All set, with furniture and mannequins of friars. There are panels that provide information and 3D images that are reproduced on touch screens.

For his part, Interpretation Center of the Kingdom of Aragon it works inside the baroque church of the New Monastery. There are huge mobile screens that play a video with the origin of the Kingdom and the Crown during the tourist visit, all in a light and sound show, where the seats move and that kind of thing. The video lasts 45 minutes.

Finally, the inn. It is next to the monastery and is a site of four stars category. It has 25 double rooms, four of them have a living room and one is adapted for the disabled), a restaurant and cafeteria, a meeting room for 150 people and parking for 28 cars. This site was inaugurated in 2007 and is one of the last to join the Network of Hospederías de Aragón.


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