In a beautiful landscape in the mountains of Madrid (Sierra de Guadarrama), outside the village of Rascafría, stands the Real Monasterio de Santa María de El Paular, the oldest carthusian monastery of Castile. A place full of history and art not part of usual touristic visits that will certainly surprise you.
To add even more interest, your guide in the tour is a monk that lives in the monastery.
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How to arrive in the Monastery of El Paular
The Monastery of El Paular (Real Monasterio de Santa María de El Paular) is 2 km South of Rascafría, by the M-604 road.
By road, it’s around 100 km from Madrid city centre.
The fastest way to arrive in El Paular is taking A-1 motorway until exit 69 (Lozoya) and taking M-604 to the West.
You can also take a more picturesque route through Sierra de Guadarrama from Manzanares el Real and Miraflores de la Sierra, crossing the Morcuera mountain pass. Drive carefully because the road is very narrow but the landscape is well worth it!
This way, you can visit in one day the Monastery of El Paular and the Castle of Manzanares el Real.
Public transport connections exist but are not recommendable.
Bus 194 takes 2h15 from Plaza de Castilla (Metro lines 1, 9 & 10) to Rascafría. There are 3 daily buses on weekdays and only 2 on weekends and bank holidays. You can check the schedule from Madrid to Rascafría in this link and for the way back in this other link.
You can take Bus 194a in Buitrago del Lozoya and it will leave you directly in El Paular (this line only runs Mon-Fri).
Opening hours and price
The Monastery of El Paular opens Wednesday to Friday 11 am – 1:30 pm & 4-6 pm.
You can just choose to visit:
- Cloister only (not guided): 5 € per person.
- Full guided tour, including the cloister and the monastery area: 7 € per person.
We definitely recommend the full guided tour, as the monastery area has some beautiful gems you can’t miss! It’s also quite charming to be shown around the monastery by one of its dwellers. You should make a reservation for the guided tour in the Monastery website, following this link.
There are 3 guided tours daily Wed-Fri, 8 on Saturdays and 6 on Sundays and holidays.
A little bit of history
The Monastery of El Paular was founded in 1390 by carthusian monks. This is an eremitic and enclosed Catholic order, established by St. Bruno of Cologne in the Grande Chartreuse, in an area of the French Prealps somewhat similar to Rascafría.
El Paular’s first monks came from the charterhouse (carthusian monastery) of Scala Dei in Catalonia. El Paular grew rapidly thanks to the protection of the Castilian monarchs: King Henry III even built a royal residence inside the monastery.
During the rule of Isabella and Ferdinand (the Catholic Kings), the monastery was renewed and enlarged, but it was in the 17th c. when two of El Paular’s unique masterpieces were created: the impressive carthusian series of Carduccio – 56 paintings designed for the cloister – and the breathtaking chapel called Capilla del Sagrario.
The Napoleonic Wars and the Confiscation of Mendizábal (1836-37) were ill-fated for El Paular. In 1836 the monastery was confiscated from the church and given to private owners that didn’t care about preserving its beautiful art… they even used it as a stable.
In 1874 the Spanish state acquired the part of the monastery with a higher historical and artistic value. Decades of neglect and the mountainous climate had heavily damaged El Paular and most of its frescoes had already been lost forever.
In the 1950s, El Paular was partly reopened as a monastery, now with a community of benedictine monks, that still lives there.
But it was not until 1990 that El Paular’s amazing artistic splendour started being recovered. Probably the most important milestone was the recovery of 52 of the 56 Carduccios, which were then restored by the Prado Museum and taken back to its original location in 2011: the cloister of El Paular.
Visit to the Monastery of El Paular
Its obvious that El Paular has been renovated and modernised. It still works as a monastery, but it recently opened a luxury hotel in its premises.
Before entering the shop and ticket office, take your time to enjoy the view of the monastery church with the mountains in the background.
After the shop, there is an exhibition about the history of the monastery and its restoration. This is located in the area of the primitive cloister, which has completely disappeared.
Then, you will arrive in a courtyard, from which you will enter the monastery.
When you enter the main building, you will see the entrance to the church on your right – that area is only open during the guided tours.
But if you continue straight through the gallery you will arrive in the first great masterpiece of El Paular.
The cloister and the carthusian series of Carduccio
Vincenzo Carduccio (or Vicente Carducho) was born in Florence but raised in Madrid. He was a great art theorist and the most prominent of the so-called Madrid school of painting in the Baroque period and royal painter of King Philip III. He built a great rivalry with world-famous Velázquez, who menaced his position.
Carduccio was very prolific but probably his greates work was this carthusian series: 56 oil on canvas paintings of 3.45 x 3.15 metres in the shape of an arch, designed to decorate each and every arch of the cloister of the Monastery of El Paular.
The fact that the carthusian monks could hire one of the most reputed painters in the Spanish capital reveals their great power and influence in the court, in spite of their austere and ascetic rule.
It took Carduccio six years, from 1626 to 1632, to finish his 56 thematic paintings.
2 of the 56 paintings were smaller and showed the coats of arms of the Carthusian Order and King Phillip IV (who helped finance the project). These have been lost.
The remaining 54 paintings (of which 52 are preserved) belonged to two different series.
The first series of 27 paintings tells us the life and posthumous miracles of Bruno of Cologne, founder of the Carthusian Order, from the moment he decided to give up social life and retire to the Grande Chartreuse.
The 27 paintings of the second series represent different episodes of the carthusians’ lives in Europe, there ascetic life and scenes of religious ecstasy like that of the Virgin Mary appearing to a Carthusian brother who was dreaming of a scary creature.
The last paintings are especially interesting – they represent the religious conflicts in 16th and 17th century Europe, with English protestants and Muslims persecuting and martyrising carthusian monks.
After the confiscation of El Paular, all 56 canvases left the monastery and they ended up in various museums of Spain. Some suffered considerable damage. The Prado recovered them and spent 9 years restoring them, finishing in 2006.
The cloister is now air conditioned to ensure that the paintings are preserved there like in a museum. The bad news is the cloister’s arches are closed and you can’t go to the central garden.
It’s true that you would be able to see the paintings better in a museum, but certainly you the best place to understand the massive work of Carduccio is in the place it was made for.
The church and the Late Gothic altarpiece
After visiting the cloister, we sat on a bench in the courtyard outside, waiting for our monk guide to arrive and start the tour. He gave us an introduction by the entrance door to the church. On the porch, the coats of arms of the Kings of Castile who built El Paular, from Henry III to Isabella.
After crossing that door, we found the second masterpiece of El Paular: an amazing wooden altarpiece or retable from the times of Queen Isabella (end of 15th c.)
The retable has also been restored and now you can admire all the details and colours of its scenes representing the life of Christ.
The metal gate from the same era at the entrance of this chapel is also not to be missed.
Capilla del Sagrario
Then, we went through a couple of chapels that are not so interesting. The layout of the church is quite surprising – it is a series of small spaces connected with doors, and not a typical large space.
And finally, the third masterpiece of El Paular: Capilla del Sagrario, one of the most beautiful Spanish Baroque chapels, even if it has been considerably damaged.
It consists of two main spaces: an octagonal central hall with 4 small chapels and, on one of its sides, the transparent.
In the dome of central hall there was a beautiful Baroque fresco that has been lost, like most of the frescoes of the smaller chapels.
The transparent is a tall hexagonal space with large windows on its upper part that focus the sunlight onto the tabernacle (sagrario in Spanish).
This monumental tabernacle is made with colourful marble stones.
Then, we visited the refectory, where the tables were already set for dinner. This space is dominated by a huge painting of the last supper and there is a pulpit for a monk to give a sermon (the rest must eat in silence).
Finally, there is a gallery with beautiful 18th c. blue tiles of Talavera, that took us back to the cloister.
The Finnish Forest of Rascafría, just across the monastery!
Don’t leave so quickly after visiting the monastery. Next to the bridge crossing river Lozoya, just across the road from El Paular, you can take a joyful walk in nature.
There is a path in around 500 metres that takes you to the Finnish Forest of Rascafría, a great place to relax with a small lake and a hut with a sauna. It really does look a bit like Finland!
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