The footprint left by feudal lords

Within just a few kilo­me­tres, the Em­por­danet gives us a broad les­son in me­dieval­ism. The feu­dal lords who left their mark on this land, the Cruïlles, the Sar­ri­era, the Foixà, the Per­atal­lada, the counts of Empúries and Besalú and many oth­ers, de­spite wars, pil­lages and other tri­fling mat­ters, built cas­tles, palaces, for­ti­fied houses and churches, which largely re­main stand­ing today.

Our pro­posal is to take a drive through some of the me­dieval vil­lages in the area. We start with Pals, a Gothic town lo­cated at the top of a peak loom­ing over a unique land­scape. We leave the map in the car and, guided by the beauty of each lit­tle cor­ner, we head for the main square, the Visig­oth tombs, the church, the cas­tle, the Hores tower, the wall and the view­point.

One of the main at­trac­tions of Palau-sator are the still-pre­served sec­tions of the town’s wall. The south­ern por­tal re­mains the entry point to the walled en­clo­sure. On top of a hill we find the cas­tle, and out­side the wall the church of Sant Pere, of Ro­manesque ori­gin.

Per­atal­lada was one of the most for­ti­fied Cata­lan towns. De­clared a place of his­toric-artis­tic in­ter­est, it boasts one of the most im­por­tant me­dieval cen­tres in the whole Em­pordà re­gion. The for­ti­fied cas­tle, the palace, the walls, the Ro­manesque church of Sant Es­teve are all es­sen­tial vis­its be­fore get­ting lost in the nar­row streets. The route con­tin­ues to­wards Vulpel­lac and the 14th-cen­tury cas­tle-palace, still in­hab­ited but with vis­it­ing days. In La Bis­bal d’Em­pordà, fa­mous for its ce­ram­ics, we find a me­dieval cas­tle-palace and many tra­di­tional shops.

Fur­ther west is Cruïlles and the must-see monastery of Sant Miquel de Cruïlles, one of the main ves­tiges of Ro­manesque ar­chi­tec­ture in Cat­alo­nia, to­gether with Mon­ells, a me­dieval vil­lage built around an old cas­tle. The jewel of this nu­cleus is the por­ti­coed Jaume I square, the set­ting for a very im­por­tant mar­ket that dates back to the Mid­dle Ages and the set for the film Ocho apel­li­dos cata­lanes. Ul­las­tret is not as renowned, but is home to a large Iber­ian site that will pleas­antly sur­prise us. Here we will dis­cover La Llotja, a Gothic cov­ered square with a rec­tan­gu­lar floor plan; the walls, which en­cir­cle a small group of nar­row, steep streets lo­cated on top of a small hill (with 10 pre­served tow­ers!), and the church of Sant Pere, from the Car­olin­gian pe­riod, i.e. pre-Ro­manesque.