The Devesa and the Ter, a perfect match

The De­vesa and Ribes del Ter parks are the lungs of the city of Girona. A walk through these two large green areas al­lows you to dis­cover the De­vesa, the largest urban park in Cat­alo­nia, lo­cated be­tween the rivers Ter, Onyar and Güell, to the west of the old town. The word “de­vesa” means an ex­ten­sion of land, cov­ered in nat­ural veg­e­ta­tion, des­tined for graz­ing and col­lect­ing fire­wood. In fact, these were some of the ways the De­vesa was used at its be­gin­nings. It was only later that it be­came a place for leisure and walk­ing.

De­clared a cul­tural asset of na­tional in­ter­est, it cov­ers an area of 40 hectares, of which nine are shaded walks. The park has more than 2,600 plane trees, hy­brids of the east­ern and west­ern species, most of which were planted around 1850 and so now are some 170 years old. These trees, which char­ac­terise the park, reach spec­tac­u­lar heights, taller than these spec­i­mens usu­ally reach, be­cause they were planted very close to each other and have grown seek­ing the light.

The De­vesa gar­dens date back to the 19th cen­tury. The French-style gar­dens are today still very sim­i­lar in struc­ture to the orig­i­nals, sur­rounded by a chan­nel and marked out with geo­met­ri­cally planted hedges.

On the other side of the river is the Ribes del Ter park and a large open green area in front of the Pavelló Mu­nic­i­pal Girona-Fonta­jau. The park is part of the nat­ural space of the Ribes del Ter, and it fol­lows the river from Fonta­jau to the mead­ows of the Pont Major, a wet­land which com­prises the banks of the river as it passes through Girona. This sec­tor, which is also well pre­served, is of great im­por­tance to the city from an eco­log­i­cal and en­vi­ron­men­tal point of view.

A day out with the fam­ily or doing some sport pro­vides the ideal op­por­tu­nity to dis­cover a wide array of routes that are arranged to re­veal the city, both on foot or by bi­cy­cle.

The city coun­cil has also or­gan­ised 10 ac­tiv­i­ties that are ad­dressed to chil­dren and re­lated to local na­ture, where the pas­sage of the river has favoured the emer­gence of a wide va­ri­ety of plants and an­i­mals.

The Ribes del Ter walk­ing route is about 3.5 km long and is flat and suit­able for peo­ple with re­duced mo­bil­ity. For more de­tailed in­for­ma­tion, check the ap­pli­ca­tion “Natura Local”.

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