Discovering Xert

With a little more determination, I got out of the house earlier this afternoon, and drove inland on the road to Morella, remembering more hill villages I'd visited where land rises above the plain. Orange groves give way to olive groves as you start to climb into through the foothills. I decided to stop and visit Xert (pronounced Chert n English), which is on a hillside below a limestone outcrop rising 300m above it. 

The 19-20th century buildings occupying what would once have been flat agricultural in front of the much older hill village are fairly non-descript, although there is a parish church in a germanic modern concrete architectural style dating from 1962 - all angles and no curves, a curiosity really.

Population growth shifted the centre of the village downhill from its mediaeval location. A modern ajuntament, has supplanted the mediaeval town hall up the hill.

Right at the top of the village is a thirteenth century Abbey, founded by the Hospitallers of St John of God. It may have been one of the first permanent buildings of the village, established to provide a refuge for travellers going to and from Morella, a good day's ride from the sea.

This religious order, established by an Andalusian peasant, is still active in social work and care for poor and maginalised in modern Spain. The village may have grown around the Abbey, as was often the case. It has an interesting variety of modest houses and a few mansions for local nobility as well. 

The Abbey declined after the monks quit, and being too large for a small population to maintain, it fell into disrepair, and then was damaged further during the Civil War, prompting the building of a new parish church, nearer to where people were then living twenty five years later. Since then, the building has been rescued and restored, but as it was closed, and there was no information to indicate the purpose it currently serves.

Most of the ancient houses have also been restored, and the fact that a small number of them haven't yet been done up suggests that gentrification is a relatively recent phenomenon, not yet complete. There was little by way of tourism information panels or signage to suggest what a treasure this old village is. I had to explore the entire place on foot to discover what was there, but that was a pleasure in itself. There are some more photos here.