The Parador of Monforte de Lemos stands on a hill overlooking the town and we stayed here once before, in 2019. I gave a brief history of the site once before and so this is a slightly different post. It is a fascinating, walled complex of castle, monastery, church and ducal mansion.
The Parador of Monforte de Lemos
The Parador was once the Monastery of San Vicente do Pino, dating from the 16th century. It was a Benedictine order – St Benedict stands above the entrance – but abandoned during the Mendizabal era. Monks occupied the buildings again in the 20th century, until the 1980s. The buildings were finally adopted by the Paradors of Spain. The church next to the monastery is mostly closed but pictures tell me we should have tried to visit…1
The Dukes of Lemos are one of the most distinguished and oldest ducal families in Galicia, being established in 1456.
Inside, the Parador’s inner courtyard is open to the sky and it was really too cool to sit there in the evenings. People tended to sit in the bar, or the seating areas around the courtyard.
We enjoyed our stay in the Parador of Monforte de Lemos, but we felt that it had, perhaps, lost some of the charm and quiet which we had previously enjoyed and which have been peculiar to the Paradors. Every day a large coach deposited yet another group of tourists (yes, we were also tourists!) who were not always very considerate. We also noticed large groups of local people were using the bar, cafeteria and dining room, something we had not found before.
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