I have been to a fair few places around the world. I have seen the enormity of the glaciers and mountains of Alaska, the beauty of the city of Paris, the luxury of the Palace of Versailles, and the complexity of the insides of the aircraft carrier the U.S.S. Midway, yet none of those compared to the impressiveness and weight the Valley of the Fallen instilled upon me. Knowing what was inside of it beforehand, I still was walking around the halls of the mausoleum with my jaw dropped almost the entire time.

The trip began with an hour-long bus ride to the nearby mountains from our hotel. Upon our arrival to the parking lot near the monument, the first thing that I noticed was the 500-foot-tall concrete Catholic Christian cross that towered on top of the mountain the Valley of the Fallen resided on. This cross is so large that it could be seen from the highway we were driving on from about fifteen miles away. But seeing it up close and personal from the parking lot really emphasized how large it is. After all, the cross is the largest Catholic cross in the world.

While we waited in the cold for the tour guide, we discussed our initial thoughts of the site and made dinner plans for later. On a side note, I really appreciate how well all of us get along so well as a group considering we basically just met each other. Regardless, when the tour guide arrived, we were all excited to get started! She gave us some more information about the cross including what the statues were of on the side of the cross and the fact that there is a maintenance staircase inside of the cross, adding to the impression of the size of the cross. From there, we walked up the path to the entrance of the Valley of the Fallen.

Upon arriving at the site officially, I was greeted with a towering concrete entrance with a courtyard to match its proportions overlooking the mountain view beyond. We were given a description of how the outside was constructed and we rushed around to take some pictures of the gorgeous views that were presented to us. After being called back, we approached the doors that were the entrance to the crypt. These massive doors gave me a taste of the scale of what awaited inside.

While the guided experience really helped to enhance the tour and made me appreciate everything more, what was on my mind the entire time was the sheer impressiveness of the inside structure. First off, being inside of it made me feel microscopic. This was not just from the size of the walls, but also from the weight of the religious themes and the amount of death that I know surrounded me. With around 35,000 corpses mass buried in the site, with many of them being those of the ones that constructed the mausoleum, it was like I could feel the death that was there. On top of that, I may not be the most religious person, but the angel statues, the statues of the patron mothers of Spain, and the detailed dome ceiling in the main part of the basilica came together to really made me feel the faith. Finally, the thing that really hit me the hardest about the interior was the acoustics. While our tour guide talked, her voice echoed for a couple seconds afterward. Listening to it, I could only imagine the sermons and Gregorian chants that occurred and what they must have sounded like.

I then realized the sound engineering that went into creating an all-stone basilica that is underground and did not result in everything always echoing and taking away from the scale of what was built. Along the walls and ceiling had textured stones that seemed to be placed there for decoration when I first saw them, but then came to realize them as being sound dampeners. As sound echoes off stone very well, to think how it was engineered to look and sound the way that it does, really added to the scale of the work done by the political prisoners. Just imagining what they had to go through to hollow out the inside of a mountain left me with goosebumps for most of the experience and with my head looking up the entire time. It was all so overwhelming trying to consider and understand the entirety of the Valley of the Fallen that it left me in shock for most of the ride home.

From my musical and engineering point of view, I had not seen anything more impressive in my life that had left such a direct impact on me while viewing it. I was told that a mass is held there at 11 A.M. every day. I really want to attend one just to see how it sounds and to feel that enormity again