When you think about what to do in Berguedà , something related to nature always comes to mind. Really, it is not for less, since Berguedà is one of the best places that a nature lover in general can enjoy.
Visiting Berguedà means hiking in the middle of living nature, crossing forests, crossing rivers… But not everything is nature. In today’s article we are going to talk about the Cement Museum in La Pobla de Lillet.
Many of the villages in Berguedà, such as La Pobla de Lillet , have an important historical load that allows you to learn more about the industrial heritage of the region. Here you will learn much more about this museum and find a few reasons to visit it.
What is the Cement Museum and why visit it
The Museu del Ciment, also known as the Cement Museum, is a museum located in the Clot del Moro area in the municipality of Castellar de n’Hug. This museum is one of the most fascinating spaces you can visit in Berguedà if you want to make a family visit of historical tourism, as it combines industrial history with modernist architecture in an exceptional natural environment.
La Pobla de Lillet Train Experience
Traveling on this tourist railway is much more than traveling on a tourist or historical train. It is more than a simple journey because it is like a journey through time. This train is a replica of the old locomotives and wagons of the time, of those that operated at the beginning of the twentieth century, so it allows you to live the experience that the workers and inhabitants of the time lived in their day.
The tour is also wonderful. Along the way you will enjoy some of the best landscapes in Berguedà. You will travel through a natural setting where you can enjoy the beauty of the environment in a different way. The best thing about the whole tour is that it’s a great way to mix nature with history and adventure, making it an ideal train journey for the whole family.
The Cement Train: tour and highlights
The Tren del Ciment has 4 stations. These stations range from La Pobla de Lillet Station to the Cement Museum, passing through La Pobla Centre and Jardines Artigas Station.
In La Pobla de Lillet you can start the tour and you can also visit the exhibition “Secondary, industrial and tourist railways in the Llobregat valley”, a great exhibition to learn more about the tourist train and other trains in the region, for example, the mining and industrial trains of the valley.
At the La Pobla Centre stop you have a large number of tourist attractions to justify the stop. Here you can enjoy part of the cultural heritage of the region by visiting the Pont Vell, the Old Town, the Church of Santa María de Lillet, the Romanesque Monastery of Santa María de Lillet, the Rotunda of Sant Miquel…
This is the station where you have to get off if you want to take a walk through the town, learn more about the local history and enjoy its gastronomy in one of its restaurants.
At the Jardins Artigas station you can discover naturist gardens with water, stone and vegetation, designed at the beginning of the twentieth century by Antoni Gaudí. These gardens have great architectural value due to how they are integrated into a natural space of wild and wild relief.
Finally, in the Clot del Moro, which is the main destination of the train, is the Cement Museum that we have told you about. The perfect culmination to a tour full of history along this historic train with an old locomotive.
Industrial History of the Cement Museum
The museum is located in the former Asland cement factory. This factory is a jewel of Catalan modernist industrial architecture of the twentieth century and was inaugurated in 1904 by the businessman Eusebi Güell.
One of the great challenges of the factory was to be able to adapt its construction to the orography of the place, something that was carried out by the architect Rafael Guastavino, an architect known for his flat brick vaults (the Catalan vault).
The Asland Factory was essential for the industrial growth of the time, as it was capable of producing large quantities of cement for all those works that were carried out in Catalonia.
In order to transport all this production, the so-called “Cement Train” was built in its day, which today is a tourist train. This narrow-gauge railway connected the factory with Guardiola de Berguedà, so it was essential in the cement industry because it took the entire area of the upper Berguedà out of isolation.
The factory, history of cement, was in operation until 1975. A few years after its closure, in 1996, the Generalitat de Catalunya acquired the site to finally inaugurate the museum in 2002. This museum is part of the National Museum of Science and Technology System of Catalonia and in 2005 it was declared a Cultural Asset of National Interest, all the more reason to justify a visit to the museum.
Activities and exhibitions at the Museu del Ciment
In the Cement Museum you can find an exhibition inside that is permanent. This exhibition serves to explain what the cement manufacturing process is like, from the extraction of the raw material until the final product is obtained. All this is illustrated by audiovisual models and parts of the original machinery that help to understand the work of that time much better.
Without a doubt, one of the most interesting parts of the visit is the walk around the outside of the enclosure. This nature excursion is duly signposted and it is a path through which you can see the modernist structures of the factory and their adaptation to the terrain. This is one of the parts that the little ones enjoy the most when they go to museums with children.
Depending on the time of year, it is possible to find a specific activity for children or families organized by the museum itself. These change over time, so it is a good idea to find out on their website if you are thinking of carrying out a visit. These interactive workshops are perfect for learning in a much more fun way.
How to get there from Berga Resort
By staying at Berga Resort you will be close to many points of interest in Berguedà. This allows you to conveniently access a large number of different places without having to spend time travelling.
To get to the Museu del Ciment from Berga Resort you will have to take the C-16 and the B-402. The approximate distance is 31 kilometers, so the journey will take you about 30 minutes.
