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5 May 2019 2.00 h

Terrassa

Ter­rassa may be an in­dus­trial city (the third largest in Cat­alo­nia) and the co­cap­i­tal (along with Sabadell) of the Vallès Oc­ci­den­tal county, about 20 kilo­me­tres out­side Barcelona, but it has a sur­pris­ing amount to offer the vis­i­tor in search of local cul­ture and her­itage.

Ter­rassa was once the Roman set­tle­ment of Egara (Mu­nicip­ium Flav­ium Egara), and later be­came a Visig­othic bish­opric, which in turn be­came a Catholic tit­u­lar see. In fact, the city’s his­tory goes fur­ther back than that, as in 2005 build­ing work un­cov­ered re­mains, such as stone tools and fos­sils of hunted an­i­mals, dat­ing back be­tween 800,000 and 1,000,000 years, mak­ing it one of the old­est pre­his­toric sites in Eu­rope.

Founded on the site of the Iber­ian town of Egosa dur­ing the time of Roman em­peror Ves­pasian (69-79 CE), cen­turies later Ter­rassa went on to be­come a major player in the tex­tile in­dus­try dur­ing the 19th-cen­tury in­dus­trial rev­o­lu­tion, leav­ing it with a rich mod­ernist legacy that can still be seen today.

De­spite Ter­rassa being a city, next to it is the nat­ural re­serve of Sant Llorenç del Munt, and it is less than 20 kilo­me­tres from Montser­rat moun­tain.

1. The Na­tional Mu­seum of Sci­ence and In­dus­try

mN­ACTEC, as the mu­seum is called for short, is housed in the Vapor Aymerich, Amat i Jover mod­ernist build­ing (1907), which used to be a tex­tile fac­tory. The mu­seum is de­voted to Cat­alo­nia’s in­dus­trial her­itage and sci­ence, and has an out­stand­ing col­lec­tion of ob­jects con­nected with the coun­try’s in­dus­trial past. The build­ing’s for­mer shop floor, cov­er­ing some 11,000 square me­tres, also fea­tures a col­lec­tion of vin­tage ve­hi­cles, sup­ple­mented by the “Viva Mon­tesa” ex­hi­bi­tion, con­tain­ing all the mod­els of the Mon­tesa mo­tor­bike brand.

2. Vall­paradís Park

Vall­paradís is Terassa’s ’cen­tral park’, cross­ing the city from north to south. Boast­ing an area of 395,500 square me­tres, and at 3.5 kilo­me­tres in length it is one of the largest urban parks in Cat­alo­nia. Home to the tex­tile mu­seum and archive and the Car­toixa cas­tle, which dates back to the 12th cen­tury and houses Ter­rassa’s city mu­seum, the park is also the venue for Ter­rassa’s an­nual in­ter­na­tional jazz fes­ti­val.

3. The mon­u­men­tal church com­plex of Sant Pere

This Ro­manesque site in­cludes the Sant Pere, Sant Miquel and Santa Maria churches. The churches, which date back to the Visig­oth pe­riod in the 6th, 7th and 8th cen­turies, were built close to what be­came the seat of the Ègara Dio­cese and were fin­ished in the Ro­manesque style in the 11th and 12th cen­turies. The Santa Maria church has out­stand­ing works of art, such as mu­rals from the Ro­manesque to the Gothic pe­ri­ods, a 10th-cen­tury altar stone, and me­dieval and Ro­manesque tomb­stones. In the transept there are three Gothic al­tar­pieces.

4. Masia Freixa

Masia Freixa is a mod­ernist build­ing in Sant Jordi Park. Con­structed in 1896, it is the jewel in the crown of Ter­rassa’s mod­ernist her­itage, with el­e­gant white arches and vaults and a high tower that re­sem­bles a minaret. It now houses the tourist of­fice.

5. Mer­cat de la In­de­pendència

The Mer­cat de la In­de­pendència is Ter­rassa’s cen­tral – and largest and most im­por­tant – mar­ket. Oc­cu­py­ing an en­tire tri­an­gu­lar city block, the mar­ket is housed in a mod­ernist build­ing that was started by the ar­chi­tect An­to­nio Pas­cual (be­tween 1904 and 1906) and fin­ished by Mel­chior Vinyals i Muñoz be­tween 1906 and 1908, when it opened.

five places to dis­cover

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