Sheraton Santa Maria de El Paular - Monastery History
Enrique II of Castile gave the order that following his death a Carthusian monastery was to be built as a redeeming act for burning another Carthusian monastery in France. It was his son Juan I, King of Castile, who began construction of the monastery on 29 August 1390, which was then completed in 1442 by John II. It was the first monastery of the Kingdom of Castile and the sixth in Spain.
The exact location was chosen to be near a shrine that became known as Santa Maria de El Paular. This chapel still survives, renamed Chapel of Our Lady of Montserrat.
The project consisted of three buildings: the monastery, church and a palace for the use and enjoyment of the monarch. There were a number of different teachers and architects who intervened on the project such as Rodrigo Alfonso, who had previously worked on the Cathedral of Toledo; the Moorish Abderamán, to whom we owe the gothic-Mudéjar refectory, and Juan Guas, responsible for the atrium and the façade of the church and cloister of the monks, which boasts an octagonal pavilion very typical of cloisters.
In the late fifteenth century Juan and Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón also worked on El Paular, specifically, the entrance to the Patio del Ave Maria in the Palace is the work of Rodrigo.
The church was built during the reign of Isabel the Catholic (1475-1504) and is the most outstanding part of the ensemble. The fence that separates followers from the monks was made by the Carthusian friar Francisco de Salamanca and is a masterpiece of its kind.