Montserrat, Spain the mountain and the monastery.
The visitor center is about an hour from Barcelona. It can be reached by road or by rail from Barcelona. If you choose the rail system you will have to do the last part either by cable car or by a funicular train since the mountain is so steep. Our tour was all ready with our own bus, driver,
If you arrive by tour bus or car, the parking is at this end of the town. From here you will have to walk into town. There is a colonnade for tour groups to meet, get instructions and reconvene. Here are the views through a couple of the archways.
If you arrive by cable car or funicular, there is a station closer to the town. It is seen on the left in the picture below. The Benedictine Basilica is out of sight on the right. Most tourists will see everything they want to see from this level, however, on the left, in the little notch in the top of the mountain is another building. There is a separate funicular that runs up the face of the cliff to access that place. A funicular has two passenger cabins connected by a cable loop. While one car goes up, the other one must come down. They kind of counter-balance each other. Usually, there are two tracks but this one is designed with a single track with a place in the center with two tracks where the cars can pass each other. In the picture, it looks like the eye of a needle in the track halfway up the cliff.
Depending on the weather on the day you visit, it may be raining if the clouds are higher or it may be bright and sunny if the clouds are lower as they are on these pictures. Every day is always a sunny day above the clouds. Remember it will always be cooler at the top of the mountain than it is at sea level, and it is usually much
In the large arch on the second floor above the altar is where the famous “Black Madonna” is protected behind a Plexiglas screen. Through a side door and a narrow stairway visitors line up to walk in front of “La
The two pictures below were taken, with a zoom lens, from the same place as the picture above at the back of the worship space.
In the courtyard of the basilica there are many arches and statues in niches of the wall. The original basilica was destroyed by Napoleon and the current one was built to replace it.
Montserrat is translated as the “saw-tooth mountain” because of its ragged top edge that resembles the cutting edge of a hand saw. That is more noticeable when the profile of the three main mountains in this coastal range are seen from a distance.
