Monasterio de Suso

Monasterio de Suso is a Visigothic and Mozarabic cave monastery on the hillside above San Millán de la Cogolla in La Rioja, forming the upper half of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of San Millán de la Cogolla. The monastery was founded in the sixth century by the hermit Emilianus, from whom the monastery and village take their names.

The cave galleries and early Romanesque arcades cut into the natural rock face of the hillside are among the oldest surviving Christian monastic structures in Iberia. The Glosas Emilianenses, brief interlinear glosses in early Castilian and Basque written in the margins of eleventh-century Latin codices, were discovered here and represent the earliest known written records of both languages.

The site is reached from the Yuso monastery below by a short but steep path through oak woodland, and the contrast between the intimate cave setting of Suso and the grand Baroque scale of Yuso below is one of the most architecturally striking encounters in La Rioja.