Monasterio de Nuestra Señora del Espino, Gothic monastery in Vivar del Cid, Spain.

The Monasterio de Nuestra Señora del Espino is a Gothic-style Clarist convent in Vivar del Cid, in the province of Burgos. It grew around a hermitage built after the image of the Virgen del Espino was found buried in the area, and it was founded as a monastery in 1475. A serious fire damaged the building in 1620.

According to local tradition, images hidden during the Muslim invasion were later found, among them the Virgen del Espino, credited with miracles; a hermitage and a beaterio following the Rule of Saint Clare grew around it. In 1475 Pedro López de Padilla, adelantado mayor of Castilla, and his wife Isabel Pacheco obtained permission from Pope Sixtus IV to found a monastery beside the hermitage for the beatas, now Clarisas nuns. A serious fire struck the Gothic building in 1620, and during the 19th-century French invasion the nuns had to abandon the convent.

The monastery served as a repository for manuscripts and religious treasures that attracted scholars and pilgrims over centuries. The nuns continue to shape daily life here through their spiritual practices and the production of handmade goods.

The monastery stands in Vivar del Cid, the birthplace of El Cid, about 10 km north of Burgos. The arcón that once held the Cantar de mio Cid manuscript is displayed inside the cenobio. The nuns are cloistered, so visits centre on the church and the exhibition rather than the monastic enclosure.

The wooden chest displayed in the monastery is the arcón that held the manuscript of the Cantar de mio Cid until the codex left in 1776. The manuscript was bought by the Fundación Juan March in 1960 and ceded to the Biblioteca Nacional de España.