Museum of Montserrat

The Museum of Montserrat exhibits over 1,300 pieces, including an Egyptian sarcophagus from the 13th century BC and works by artists like Caravaggio and Picasso.

Planning your visit

The Museum of Montserrat exists because the Benedictine monastery has been receiving gifts and bequests for over a century, and the result is a collection of over 1,300 works of unexpected quality for a mountain abbey.

The range is remarkable: a thirteenth-century BC Egyptian sarcophagus and Mesopotamian and Cypriot antiquities; Old Master painting including Caravaggio's Saint Jerome and works by El Greco, Berruguete and Tiepolo; Catalan modernista and noucentista painting; and twentieth-century work including Picasso, Dalí, Miró and Monet.

Most visitors come to Montserrat for the monastery, the black Madonna and the boys' choir — one of the oldest in Europe, singing at set times daily — and for the serrated rock formations of the mountain itself, which is a hiking and climbing destination.

The museum is easy to overlook among all that and shouldn't be. It sits beside the basilica. Allow an hour. Bookable options combine museum and monastery entry. Current availability is shown below.