Jardins de Mossèn Cinto Verdaguer: Mount of the Jews
Why is it significant?
Step onto the terraces and look down at the ponds and beds below you, with the cable car gliding silently overhead towards the castle.
Key Facts
| Place | Jardins de Mossèn Cinto Verdaguer: Mount of the Jews |
|---|---|
| Address | Avinguda de Miramar, 08038 Barcelona, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.36770, 2.16420 |
| Part of Walk | Montjuïc, the Hill of Big Dreams: Barcelona's 1929 Expo, Olympic Ring & Castle |
| Generated | Generated |
Step onto the terraces and look down at the ponds and beds below you, with the cable car gliding silently overhead towards the castle. Depending on the season you will find tulips, irises, dahlias or water lilies, because these gardens are dedicated to plants that grow from bulbs and to plants that live in water.
They are named after Mossèn Cinto, Father Jacint Verdaguer, the priest-poet whose epic poems helped bring the Catalan language back to literary life in the nineteenth century. When he died in 1902, an enormous crowd followed his funeral through Barcelona. A poet-priest, on a hill full of flowers, felt right to the city.
Now think about the name of the whole mountain: Montjuïc. The most widely accepted explanation is that it means the Mount of the Jews. In the Middle Ages, the Jewish community of Barcelona buried its dead on this slope, and gravestones with Hebrew inscriptions have been found here. Some historians prefer another root, the Mount of Jupiter, from Roman times... but the Jewish cemetery is a fact, and the community lived in the city until the violence of 1391.
Montjuïc has always worked for the city below. For two thousand years its sandstone was quarried and carried down to build Barcelona: Roman walls, the cathedral, the churches of the old town. Much of the Gothic Quarter is, quite literally, made of this hill. And for centuries it was a place the city kept at arm's length: cemeteries, quarries, shacks, the gallows, and a fortress pointing its guns at the streets.
Only in the twentieth century did Barcelona start to see the mountain as a park, with gardens like these on old, worked-out ground. From the upper terraces you can see the port and the sea opening up beyond the trees. Now climb the last stretch of road towards the walls above you. The fortress at the top is the final stop, and the most serious one.