Iglesia de Montserrat: The Church of the Exiled Monks
Why is it significant?
On Calle de San Bernardo, stop in front of the church with the single, richly carved tower climbing up on one side of its front. Now look at the other side. Something is missing. The façade feels lopsided, as if the building had stopped halfway through a sentence.
Key Facts
| Place | Iglesia de Montserrat: The Church of the Exiled Monks |
|---|---|
| Address | Calle de San Bernardo 79, 28015 Madrid, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 40.42770, -3.70670 |
| Part of Walk | Dukes, Monks and an Egyptian Temple: Madrid's Conde Duque to Templo de Debod |
| Generated | Generated |
On Calle de San Bernardo, stop in front of the church with the single, richly carved tower climbing up on one side of its front. Now look at the other side. Something is missing. The façade feels lopsided, as if the building had stopped halfway through a sentence.
The church is Nuestra Señora de Montserrat, and its story begins far away, on the jagged mountain of Montserrat near Barcelona. In 1640 Catalonia rose in revolt against Philip IV, in what is called the Reapers' War. The Benedictine monastery of Montserrat had both Catalan and Castilian monks, and the rebels threw out the Castilians, who were seen as loyal to the king.
The exiled monks came to Madrid and founded a new house here, dedicated to the same black Madonna they had left behind. Philip IV supported them, glad to show that loyalty to the crown would be rewarded. Building began in 1668, slowly, as money came and went.
The tower you see was added in the 1720s by Pedro de Ribera, the same architect as the Conde Duque barracks, in the exuberant style Spaniards call Churrigueresque: broken cornices, curling scrolls, pinnacles and statues. It was meant to have a twin on the other side, and the church itself was meant to be much longer. Neither ever happened. The money ran out, the monastery was suppressed in the nineteenth century, and the church was left as you see it, a magnificent fragment.
Madrid is full of half-finished dreams like this one, and somehow they are more moving than the completed ones. The monks never went home to their mountain; their church stayed here, waiting for a tower that never came. Now walk south down Calle de San Bernardo. In a few minutes you reach a long, grave building where, for more than a century, every doctorate in Spain was awarded.