Museo de San Martiño Pinario

Santiago de Compostela


The enormous church of the huge baroque Benedictine monastery of San Martiño Pinario is open to visitors as part of a museum that's well worth a visit. The church's centrepiece is its incredibly ornate main altarpiece, encrusted with carved saints, cherubim, flowers, horses and bishops. The walnut choir stalls behind this also merit close inspection.

Upstairs at the church's east end is the 17th-century Coro Lígneo, another set of choir stalls that originally sat in Santiago Cathedral. The monastery, founded in the 10th century, had its heyday in the 16th and 17th centuries, when it was the second biggest in Spain, after San Lorenzo de El Escorial.