Carme Church and Convent

The Church of El Carme is a Gothic-style temple designed by the master builder Berenguer de Montagut and built in the mid-14th century. It is a single-nave church with side chapels and ribbed vaults. On its original façade, a small oculus could be seen above the main doorway. According to popular tradition, it was through this small window that the mysterious light from Montserrat entered the nave, giving rise to the famous Miracle of the Light (Milagro de la Llum).

According to testimonies collected during the canonization processes of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the future saint visited the Church of El Carme daily, along with the Church of Sant Pere Màrtir and the Basilica of La Seu.

From the early 17th century onward, the main nave housed a large Baroque altarpiece located behind the main altar. Although it has disappeared, some of its elements can still be admired today at the Manresa Museum.

At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, the church was completely demolished by antifascist workers’ militias. After the conflict, it was rebuilt following the design of architect Juan Rubió Bellver, who gave it its current Neo-Gothic style. Unfortunately, the exterior façades of the temple were never completed.

Attached to one side of the church stood a Carmelite convent. The Carmelite community of Manresa occupied this two-story, U-shaped building with a courtyard between the 14th and 19th centuries. The connection between the church and the convent was an impressive Gothic cloister, which was renovated in the mid-18th century. From 1835 onwards, the former convent and cloister were converted into the main military barracks of the city, a function it retained until the 1960s. In autumn 1990, the former barracks were transformed into a hostel that is now part of the Xarxa d’Albergs de la Generalitat de Catalunya. Today, some columns from the 18th-century Classical cloister can still be admired.