I don't even know how to start this report, I'm still shaking from the adrenaline...but here it goes, maybe let's get the historical facts out of the way first!
In the late XVIth century the Order of the Capuchin Monks established a humble monastery on top a hill, in the outskirts of a border town between Spain and France:
The monastery a few years after it was built, taken from a French military map of 1653.
Two things happened that led to the downfall and closure of the monastery: in 1650, the city was affected by a plague of Black Death, adding up to a warring period with the French. The place badly suffered from both events, and by 1678 the monastery was abandoned and in ruins.
The forgotten location got a new lease of life a few years later, when in 1707 it was converted into a military fort, linked to some of the other defences of the city:
This was all part of a system of fortifications with its central hub in the Montjuic Castle a little further away, of which you can see my previous report here:
Report - - Montjuïc Castle - Girona (Spain-July 2021) (Pic Heavy) | European and International Sites
Then, in 1814 the French troops abandoned the city, blowing up all the infrastructure they had built during their occupation, but the place still got a last use a century later, when a gunpowder depot was built on the old site of the fort:
The gunpowder depot in 1924.
After that, not much is known about what happened, but to tell the story of this explore we have to take a trip back in time, back to when the area was a Capuchin monastery.
I think the Capuchins are cool people because they are into underground stuff. They love digging their crypts, cisterns, tunnels...cool people indeed.
Sooo of course the Capuchins being Capuchins, they couldn't resist their urge to dig, and back in 1563 they had built a huge cistern under their monastery.
What I find amazing is that the cistern managed to survive all the uses the area had over the centuries, and even the french bombing which razed the place. On the blog I took this info from, there were some pictures of the underground space and even a map:
I actually had been to the area way before being interested in exploring, but now it became an obsession. Monasteries, forts, wars, religion... surely there had to be something interesting there. A year ago, me and my mate went to check the place but the main gate of the cistern was of course padlocked, and we ended up being chased by a scary dog, so we left it on the back of the list. Just 2 weeks ago I picked up again on the research on the area, I'd always thought finding the escape tunnel would be impossible, that it would be long buried and lost... But then I found this:
That seemed like a gift from God. Someone had mapped the area with Lidar, and the points were suspiciously similar to the ones in the map... If I focused on the top right corner, maybe I would find the escape tunnel that would lead me inside the cistern? There was only one way to find out.
So on a sunny spring morning, we set our way to the old convent/fort grounds, knowing more or less where to look but not knowing what to look for. Once arriving on top of the hill, you're greeted by the old gunpowder depot, which is gonna have to be explored one day, but that morning the mission was set someplace else.
Nothing remains of the monastery, but if you look at the left on the pic above, you can see a concrete cap covering...something. There were a few of those dotted around the place.
The main entrance to the cistern, tightly secured with an iron gate and a thick padlock from the inside. The location is quite scenic, in 1992 they built this telecom tower as a repeater for the Barcelona Olympic Games TV signal. We were not gonna enter through here, so once the place was scoped out, it was time to look for our access. Using the technical map, the Lidar points and our own Google Maps, we positioned ourselves in what was likely to be the slope of the hill where the emergency exit of the cistern was supposed to be... and there it was.
It took a while to realise, but in one spot there was a particularly strong tree coming from a crack in the rocks, with a particularly soft floor underneath... it took some clearing of undergrowth and stones, but after some sweating, we were left with a tight hole to squeeze through in front of us... and we were in.
Entering the site was fun, the entrance we'd managed to dig was like an L shaped shaft: a 3 ft. vertical drop followed by this tight squeeze. Once inside, you're first greeted by the remains of random trash and dead animals people used to throw through the vent holes in the surface years ago, that's why the council capped them with concrete:
To the left, a passage leads us deeper inside the belly of the mountain, which arrives at a crossroads after a few meters:
For now let's take the path to the left, which slopes upwards and turns right. This is the main access to the cistern from the locked gate on the surface:
Back to the juction, this is where the interesting stuff starts, and the main reason of our endeavours. First, a little room with some nice stone details:
But if I zoom out a little, there's a hole in the wall...
I would need a wider camera lens to capture this space properly, but after that wall, finally, there was the cistern.
With these arches, the spaces to hold candles...it didn't feel just like a water storage tank. Who knows what the underground-loving Capuchin monks were up to in here...but let's not get Dan Brown-ish.
Accessing this cistern felt like a huge accomplishment. In this city where I live, people have always told legends about secret tunnels and underground rooms. While some of them are definitely hyped up, there's far too many coincidences for it to be all nonsense. So me and @Bertuu have made it our mission to uncover what's left of this underground heritage. The town council is aware of the existence of some of these places, some of them are still about to be discovered, but it's a shame that in any other european country, this would be promoted and be made accessible, while in my city history just gets padlocked and forgotten. I say no to that. You can read about another awesome underground place we managed to crack a year ago here, and I do believe these 2 locations are part of what the elders talk about when they explain that they'd been to dark scary places as kids, and made up part of the 'underground legends' of the city:
Report - - Benedicte Fontes Deum (A.K.A. Water Mine) - Spain (January 2022) | European and International Sites
Being so happy to have cracked the underground holy grail of our city, we decided to give it a proper homage, so we lit the place up with 100 candles and took some pics:
I'd never experimented with this kind of lighting and was a bit lazy to adjust the camera, so we still got the help of some lamps... but I think the candles look cool and fitting to the place!
After we were done we picked up the candles and smoked a 'victory cigarette' while the wax was cooling down, taking in all the emotions that this hobby gives us when done right, and then calmly started our ascent back from the realm of legends into the warm Catalan sun.
In the late XVIth century the Order of the Capuchin Monks established a humble monastery on top a hill, in the outskirts of a border town between Spain and France:
The monastery a few years after it was built, taken from a French military map of 1653.
Two things happened that led to the downfall and closure of the monastery: in 1650, the city was affected by a plague of Black Death, adding up to a warring period with the French. The place badly suffered from both events, and by 1678 the monastery was abandoned and in ruins.
The forgotten location got a new lease of life a few years later, when in 1707 it was converted into a military fort, linked to some of the other defences of the city:
This was all part of a system of fortifications with its central hub in the Montjuic Castle a little further away, of which you can see my previous report here:
Report - - Montjuïc Castle - Girona (Spain-July 2021) (Pic Heavy) | European and International Sites
Then, in 1814 the French troops abandoned the city, blowing up all the infrastructure they had built during their occupation, but the place still got a last use a century later, when a gunpowder depot was built on the old site of the fort:
The gunpowder depot in 1924.
After that, not much is known about what happened, but to tell the story of this explore we have to take a trip back in time, back to when the area was a Capuchin monastery.
I think the Capuchins are cool people because they are into underground stuff. They love digging their crypts, cisterns, tunnels...cool people indeed.
Sooo of course the Capuchins being Capuchins, they couldn't resist their urge to dig, and back in 1563 they had built a huge cistern under their monastery.
What I find amazing is that the cistern managed to survive all the uses the area had over the centuries, and even the french bombing which razed the place. On the blog I took this info from, there were some pictures of the underground space and even a map:
I actually had been to the area way before being interested in exploring, but now it became an obsession. Monasteries, forts, wars, religion... surely there had to be something interesting there. A year ago, me and my mate went to check the place but the main gate of the cistern was of course padlocked, and we ended up being chased by a scary dog, so we left it on the back of the list. Just 2 weeks ago I picked up again on the research on the area, I'd always thought finding the escape tunnel would be impossible, that it would be long buried and lost... But then I found this:
That seemed like a gift from God. Someone had mapped the area with Lidar, and the points were suspiciously similar to the ones in the map... If I focused on the top right corner, maybe I would find the escape tunnel that would lead me inside the cistern? There was only one way to find out.
So on a sunny spring morning, we set our way to the old convent/fort grounds, knowing more or less where to look but not knowing what to look for. Once arriving on top of the hill, you're greeted by the old gunpowder depot, which is gonna have to be explored one day, but that morning the mission was set someplace else.
Nothing remains of the monastery, but if you look at the left on the pic above, you can see a concrete cap covering...something. There were a few of those dotted around the place.
The main entrance to the cistern, tightly secured with an iron gate and a thick padlock from the inside. The location is quite scenic, in 1992 they built this telecom tower as a repeater for the Barcelona Olympic Games TV signal. We were not gonna enter through here, so once the place was scoped out, it was time to look for our access. Using the technical map, the Lidar points and our own Google Maps, we positioned ourselves in what was likely to be the slope of the hill where the emergency exit of the cistern was supposed to be... and there it was.
It took a while to realise, but in one spot there was a particularly strong tree coming from a crack in the rocks, with a particularly soft floor underneath... it took some clearing of undergrowth and stones, but after some sweating, we were left with a tight hole to squeeze through in front of us... and we were in.
Entering the site was fun, the entrance we'd managed to dig was like an L shaped shaft: a 3 ft. vertical drop followed by this tight squeeze. Once inside, you're first greeted by the remains of random trash and dead animals people used to throw through the vent holes in the surface years ago, that's why the council capped them with concrete:
To the left, a passage leads us deeper inside the belly of the mountain, which arrives at a crossroads after a few meters:
For now let's take the path to the left, which slopes upwards and turns right. This is the main access to the cistern from the locked gate on the surface:
Back to the juction, this is where the interesting stuff starts, and the main reason of our endeavours. First, a little room with some nice stone details:
But if I zoom out a little, there's a hole in the wall...
I would need a wider camera lens to capture this space properly, but after that wall, finally, there was the cistern.
With these arches, the spaces to hold candles...it didn't feel just like a water storage tank. Who knows what the underground-loving Capuchin monks were up to in here...but let's not get Dan Brown-ish.
Accessing this cistern felt like a huge accomplishment. In this city where I live, people have always told legends about secret tunnels and underground rooms. While some of them are definitely hyped up, there's far too many coincidences for it to be all nonsense. So me and @Bertuu have made it our mission to uncover what's left of this underground heritage. The town council is aware of the existence of some of these places, some of them are still about to be discovered, but it's a shame that in any other european country, this would be promoted and be made accessible, while in my city history just gets padlocked and forgotten. I say no to that. You can read about another awesome underground place we managed to crack a year ago here, and I do believe these 2 locations are part of what the elders talk about when they explain that they'd been to dark scary places as kids, and made up part of the 'underground legends' of the city:
Report - - Benedicte Fontes Deum (A.K.A. Water Mine) - Spain (January 2022) | European and International Sites
Being so happy to have cracked the underground holy grail of our city, we decided to give it a proper homage, so we lit the place up with 100 candles and took some pics:
I'd never experimented with this kind of lighting and was a bit lazy to adjust the camera, so we still got the help of some lamps... but I think the candles look cool and fitting to the place!
After we were done we picked up the candles and smoked a 'victory cigarette' while the wax was cooling down, taking in all the emotions that this hobby gives us when done right, and then calmly started our ascent back from the realm of legends into the warm Catalan sun.
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