Montserrat

The train ride to Montserrat is dark for the first half, cutting through the bowels of the city of Barcelona until suddenly you emerge from the tunnels into the light. From there on you journey through jagged countryside to the foot of the serrated mountains that are the natural guardians of the monastery. It’s a lovely trek, and not a bad metaphor for the recent restoration work done, if I do say so myself.

In the late 1980s an architect by the name of Arcadi Pla was commissioned to restore the leaking roof of the basilica, a seemingly inconsequential project. Unfortunately for the monks, it was a bit more complicated than that. The short version involves a 14th Century cathedral which was added to (badly) in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The final basilica as it would have been seen in the eighties had lost its simple gothic style in favor of the more romantic “flying buttress” affair popular in the 1700s. Along with some structural decisions that did far more harm the good, the overall look of the church had slowly but irreverently been modified to be dark (all windows had been bricked over in favor of “decorative” facades) and fussy as opposed to the original light, classic design that had been built in the 1300s.

Imagine being an architect, trying to research the best way to fortify such a place, only to discover that the best thing you could possibly do for the building is to take it back to the beginning. Remove much of the additions, create a new roof structure, reclaim the old rose windows, pull down two floors off the top of the structure (added in the 16th century), and oh by the way you have to convince the abbot and the money, i.e. government, that this is a good idea…

Eee, gads!

Somehow, Pla did it. It took about 15 years from start to completion, cost around 3 million euros, and completely changed the face of the mountain – whether with accolades or derision I was afraid to ask. In my humble opinion, however, the project is stellar, an example of how preservationists can act not only as architects and designers, but also as historians and archivists. It is – again – exactly the type of work I would like to one day achieve in my own practice.