The monastery of Santa María de Vallbona is the most important female Cistercian monastery in Catalonia. It has maintained its monastic activity uninterruptedly for more than 800 years. Its beginnings, at the beginning of the 12th century, were as a mixed group of hermits who followed the Rule of Sant Benet, later converted into monastics, under the pastoral staff of its founder, Ramón de Vallbona. In 1175 the monks moved to Montsant, leaving the female monastic community in Vallbona, which joined the Cistercian order.
The monastery is made up of the temple, presided over by the Mare de Déu del cor, in the usual sober and slightly ornamented style of the order, and by the trapezoidal-shaped cloister, and the other dependencies (chapter house, the archive and the old pharmacy).