Walking in Simat de Valldigna, April 2023, Part1

Описание: Simat de Valldigna (Simat de la Valldigna ) is a municipality in the Valencian Community, Spain. It belongs to the region of Safor, in the province of Valencia. It had 3,705 inhabitants.
La Valldigna constitutes a natural valley surrounded by the beautiful mountains of the Sierra de Corbera.
It is located 55 km from Valencia.

In the town of Simat de Valldigna is situated the impressive Royal Monastery of Santa Maria de Valldigna. Open for public visits. It can be seen in this video.

Valldigna, in the northern part of the Safor region, extends from the surrounding mountains down to the sea. It must indeed have seemed a "worthy valley) to James the Just (1267-1327) when he chose it in 1278 as a site on which is establish a community of Cistercians monks from Santes Creus Monastery in Catalonia and found this monastic complex, which over the centuries, became one of the most important, illustrious and influential in the territory of Valencia.

In the course of its long history, the monastery has been structured from a number of elements designed for the various purposes and tasks of the community (church, chapterhouse, refectory, locutory, etc.), as is usually the case in this kind of architecture ensemble, experienced times of prosperity and others of decline and stagnation. It fell into complete decrepitude in 1835, when the processes of the church property confiscation led to the sale of the monastery and the secularisation and consequent departure of the monks, together with the gradual disposal and dispersal of its property.

Decades of dilapidation neglect and plunder took their toll on the site. Having degenerated and been turned into a farm, it saw most of its buildings demolished and their remains used as building materials or even carried off as trophies for collectors as happened with the Gothic upper cloister of the Abbot's palace.

Finally acquired by the Valencian Regional Government in 1991 and placed under the direct administration of its Department of Education Research, Culture and Sport the monastic complex and its surroundings have been the object in recent years of an intense process of comprehensive restoration work in which the combined and coordinated efforts of a range of disciplines (architecture, archaeology, art history, museum studies, heritage restoration) continue to work towards a more complete and accurate realisation of what the Monastery of Vaildigna is now and aims to be in the future: a cultural treasure.

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