Prades, where a thousand-year-old cloister ended up in New York

A founding abbey, a scattered cloister

The Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa abbey, founded in the 9th century a few kilometres south of Prades, reached its golden age around the turn of the first millennium under Abbot Oliba, a major figure of Catalan monastic reform who simultaneously led Cuxa and the abbey of Ripoll. The resulting pre-Romanesque and Romanesque complex ranks among the most important in Catalonia.

In the early 20th century, left derelict after the Revolution, the abbey's cloister was dismantled and sold off piece by piece: some of its capitals crossed the Atlantic and ended up forming the core of the Cloisters, the Met's medieval branch in New York, opened in 1938. The other half was gradually restored to Cuxa over the course of the 20th century, so the same cloister now exists split in two, on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

Pablo Casals, the exile that founded a festival

Catalan cellist Pablo Casals fled Spain in 1939, after Franco's victory, and settled in Prades. There he made a radical decision: to refuse public performances for as long as Western democracies kept recognising the Franco regime, a pledge he held to for several years.

In 1950, on the bicentenary of Bach's death, musician friends convinced him to break his silence, on condition the concert take place in Prades itself. That is how the Pablo Casals Festival was born, still held every summer inside the Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa cloister, and now one of the most respected classical music events in the south of France.

From the abbey to the yellow train

The classic visit pairs the Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa abbey, a few kilometres south, with the Saint-Pierre church in central Prades, for Josep Sunyer's Baroque altarpiece. Between the two, the town itself is easy to explore on foot, around Place de la République and its Tuesday market.

To get out of town, Prades-Molitg station puts you straight on the rails of the Train Jaune, the heritage narrow-gauge line that has climbed toward the Cerdagne since 1910, while the Gorges de la Carança, about twenty kilometres away, offer one of the most spectacular hikes in the Conflent, on footbridges suspended above the torrent.