Besalú, capital of a medieval county: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
The Romanesque bridge, the Jewish quarter and the monastery
Besalú was the capital of its own medieval county until 1111, and the walk moves through what that age left behind: a bridge, a Jewish quarter with its ritual bath, a royal court, a castle hill and parish church, and Romanesque stone at nearly every turn.
The stops
The first record of a bridge at Besalú dates from 1075, and the one standing today is the result of centuries of rebuilding and repair after floods. It crosses the Fluvià in seven uneven arches set at an angle. The fortified tower and gate that stood on it were torn down in 1880 to let machinery through, so the tower in the middle today is a later restoration. A heraldic stone dated 1680 points to a major restoration, and in 1939, during the Civil War, two arches were blown up.
Photo: Palauenc05 — CC BY-SA 4.0 Down by the river, inside the old Jewish quarter, a ritual bath came to light in 1964, found by Esteve Arboix, the owner of the land above it. Two rabbis, one from Paris and one from Perpignan, confirmed from its water capacity of 40 saha that it was a mikveh, and it was the first building of its kind found in Spain and the third in Europe. You go down 36 steps to a rectangular pool in a vaulted underground room of cut travertine.
Photo: Raimer — CC BY-SA 3.0 What has come down of the old hospital's church is its façade, from the late 12th century, with a richly carved portal of six receding arches, the second and fifth resting on round columns. Records are almost nonexistent, but it is believed that Count-Bishop Miró, who also founded the monastery of Sant Pere, built it to shelter the town's poor, and in 1336 the town council created the post of hospital monk. The portal was probably made by the same masters who built the apses of Santa Maria.
Photo: Aktron — CC BY-SA 4.0 The Royal Court was built for the administration of justice, and among buildings of that kind it is described as one of the oldest and one of the only ones. Its wide Gothic audience hall, from the 14th century, is divided into three aisles by two rows of pointed arches, and the west wall has two Gothic windows with paired columns. The original entrance is on Carrer del Portalet, and in the 17th century the town's court moved to the Casa Santa Maria, opposite the church of Sant Vicenç.
Photo: Vicenç Riullop — CC BY-SA 3.0 Known as the Plaça de la Llibertat or the Plaça Major, this is a wide, spacious square where a market is still held every Tuesday. Three sides of the square have arches, all of them different because they were built at different times; only the side between Carrer Major and Carrer Tallaferro has none. The town hall stands over the first two arches, and in its courtyard are two official grain measures, one of them inscribed 1730.
Photo: pere prlpz — CC BY-SA 3.0 The apses of Santa Maria, decorated with blind arches and half-columns, stand on the hill where the counts of Besalú had their castle. The church was consecrated as the castle chapel in 1055, in the time of Count William II, and after the county ended in 1111 it became the church of an Augustinian canonry. Under Count Bernat Tallaferro, who ruled from 988 to 1020, the county reached its greatest influence and the town briefly had its own bishop. On Carrer del Comte Tallaferro, an arched gate of the first walls, known as the Portal de la Força, is the oldest element still standing in Besalú.
Photo: Rafa Esteve — CC BY-SA 4.0 Sant Vicenç was originally Besalú's parish church, and it is recorded as early as 977, when Count Miró Bonfill gave it to the church of Santa Maria. The building you see is the third or fourth rebuilding of the church, made probably across the 12th and 13th centuries with some Gothic elements. Its south doorway is a richly carved late-Romanesque work, and the apse still carries blind arcading under a sawtooth frieze.
Photo: Arnau Brosa — CC BY-SA 4.0 Also known as Casa Cornellà, this is one of the best-preserved examples of Romanesque civil architecture in medieval Catalonia, though altered later: a sturdy square house built around a courtyard and entered through a deep vaulted passage. An outside stair leads to the noble rooms on the first floor, behind three galleries of round arches on columns, with stables and service rooms below and the granary above. Construction can be dated from 1171, when permission was given to build on the Prat de Sant Pere, and the house is better known by the name of the Llaudes family, who bought it in 1476.
Photo: V.Riullop (talk) — CC BY-SA 3.0 Count Miró Bonfill, who was also bishop of Girona, founded this Benedictine monastery in 977 and placed it under the direct protection of the Holy See, and he had the relics of Saints Primus and Felician brought from Agen. Its church was consecrated in 1003 thanks to Count Bernat Tallaferro, and the present church, a rebuilding of 1060, is all that remains of the monastery, which was suppressed in 1835. In the apse, the ambulatory has carved capitals, one showing Herod advised by the devil and another the Massacre of the Innocents, and on the facade lions in high relief flank the window.
Photo: Zarateman — CC0
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