Municipality of the region of Region of Tarazona and The Moncayo that includes the nuclei of Vera de Moncayo and Veruela. (Images)

The Monastery of Veruela is one of the Cistercian monasteries more important, left with Desamortizaciónde Mendizábal (1835) and at present in restoration phase on the part of the Delegation of Saragossa, which is destining it to cultural uses: concerts, exhibitions, etc...

Visits:
On April 1 to September 30: from 10 hs until 14 hs and from 16 hs until 19 hs.
On October 1 to March 31: from 10. until 13 hs and from 15. until 18 hs.
Holding a permit visits: Service of Culture of the County council of Saragossa
Phone: 976288880

The most ancient document referred to the foundation of the monastery verolense is the assertion for the Navarrese king García Ramírez of donation of the places of Veruela and the Olive and his possessions to Cistercian monastery of Santa Maria of Niencebas (Fitero, Navarre) in 1145 for the erection of each monasteries of the Order. This one had been founded in 1098 by Roberto de Molesmes who anxious of restoring the austerity that it characterized to the Benedictine order in his origins (Vth century) withdrew from himself Citeaux (close to Dijon, France), the first Cistercian foundation.

Some time after San Bernardo will found Claraval, opening one enormous apologetic and doctrinal work.

The Cistercian reform of the relaxed Benedictine observance Cluniac quickly expanded to the whole medieval Europe.

In Aragon there got up big foundations, the first one of which it was Veruela (1145 ó 1146), to which they continued Wheel (1153), Stone (1194) and Santa Fe in Cuarte (1223), all in the current one province of Saragossa; also the feminine monasteries were erected of Trasobares (h 1168), near to Veruela, and Buckthorn, moved in the XVIth century to that of Saint Lucia in the Aragonese capital, the only one actively in the province

These religious foundations were propitiated by the crown Aragonese with the assertion of numerous privileges and donations, that added to those of the individuals, they composed a rich one patrimony that in the case verolense was shaping a network with tens of possessions that were going from Huesca to Saviñán passing for Pedrola.

They contributed not only a few religious-spiritual new values and cultural but also of economic-political nature across mastery of the space by means of the colonizing effort.

The «monks roturadores» since it has happened in Cistercians called to for his agricultural economic influence, they organize his abbeys as real nuclei that activate the areas repopulation deserted or little populated across the plowing of the grounds uneducated, or in defensive-frontier territories, characteristics both of which it informs Veruela.

For the mastery of the space the arrangement turns out to be basic of resources of the water; for it the monks verolenses formed one wide network of ditches, preys and mills concerning the basin of Huecha.

The construction of the current monastery had to be sufficiently moved forward in the year 1171 as to make the transfer possible of community. The works of the church dilated for space of more of 250 years

With cathedral proportions, it presents three high separated ships for cruciform props that support arcades of half a point. Harmonic and monumental vaults cover the ships, which finish in a head with ambulatory. The western door for which one gains access to the temple has six archivolts that they rest on ten columns, appreciating in the eardrum a crismón of beautiful invoice.

While cloister is Gothic, his communication with the chapter room realizes across a few elegant Romanesque arcades, the same one style of the mentioned room, covered with vaults of crucería supported in four central columns and columns attached to walls.

In the XVIIth century a new monastic building was constructed, with 65 individual cells for the monks. During the works, monastery was visited by proper king Felipe IV.

Romanesque size in wood of the Virgin with the Child. XIIth century.

Renaissance size in wood of the Virgin with the Child. XVIth century.

Tomb in alabaster of abbot don Lope Marco realized by Pedro Moreto. XVIth century.

The area is a wines producer, under the Denomination of Origin I Stand out of Borja, whose museum we can visit in Cistercian monastery of Veruela, architectural set of indisputable value historical - artistic. In him, also there is located the Space Bécquer, devoted to the well-known brothers Gustavo Adolfo and Valeriano. Both stayed at the monastery between 1863 and 1864, taking shape by means of the "Letters from my cell" first, and his paintings the second one, the forms of life and them legends of the region

The Moncayo, Nature reserve, is also a place for disfrutaren flat nature, where the aficonados to the mountaineering can llegarhasta his summits with almost perpetual snow. (fte and texts to see links)