Consecrated in AD 888, the Monestir de Santa Maria was Catalonia’s spiritual and cultural heart from the mid-10th to mid-11th centuries. The five-naved basilica was adorned in about 1100 with a stone portal that ranks among the most splendid Romanesque art in Spain. The well restored basilica interior has admirable floor mosaics, a display about the Bibles of Ripoll (rare illustrated manuscripts created between AD 1008 and 1020), plus the tomb of Guifré el Pilós, who founded the monastery.
Two floors of cloisters , whose columns are carved with a menagerie of fantastical beasts, overlook a babbling fountain and neatly tended gardens. From the upper level you can see hills carpeted in forest.
