Our ceremony and reception will be held at the Ancient Spanish Monastery.

The Ancient Spanish Monastery: “the biggest jigsaw puzzle in history.”

Construction of the Monastery of St. Bernard de Clairvaux was begun in the year 1133 AD in Sacramenia, near Segovia in northern Spain. Completed eight years later in 1141, the Monastery was dedicated to the Blessed Mother and was originally named ‘The Monastery of Our Lady, Queen of the Angels.’ Upon the canonization of Bernard of Clairvaux in 1174, the Monastery was renamed in his honor. Cistercian monks occupied the Monastery for nearly 700 years. After a social revolution in the 1830’s, the Monastery’s Cloisters were seized, sold, and converted into a granary and stable.

In 1925, William Randolph Hearst purchased the Cloisters and the Monastery’s outbuildings. The structures were dismantled stone by stone, bound with protective hay, packed in more than 11,000 wooden crates, numbered for identification and shipped to the United States. Soon after the shipment arrived, Hearst’s financial problems forced most of his collection to be sold at auction. The massive crates remained in a warehouse in Brooklyn, New York, for 26 years. One year after Hearst’s’ death in 1952, they were purchased by two entrepreneurs. It took 19 months and the equivalent of nearly $20 million dollars (in today’s currency) to put the Monastery back together. In 1953 Time magazine called it “the biggest jigsaw puzzle in history.”

Today the parish Church of St. Bernard de Clairvaux is an active and growing congregation Diocese of Southeast Florida. In addition to serving as a church, the Ancient Spanish Monastery moonlights as a backdrop in movies and music videos. Check out the two links below, odds are you’ve probably already seen it in a movie!

Rock of Ages: YouTube: Rock of Ages

Ace Ventura Pet Detective: YouTube: Ace Ventura Pet Detective