Torroella de Montgrí
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Torroella de Montgrí is a small town on the north bank of the Ter river.
The town is 22km east of Girona and 5 km west of the resort of L'Estartit. It lies on the junction of the C-31 and GI-641.
The town was originally the Royal Port for the Kings of Aragon before the river started silting up and a new port was founded at Palamós.
The Championship golf course Emporda is 2km south of the town.
The town retains it's medieval core and walls and hosts a market every Monday. It is towered over by the Montgrí Massif, the middle of which at 308m is topped by a castle, the Montgrí Castle.
The Montgrí Castle
The History of the Fortress
The Montgrí castle was built between 1294 and 1301. Its reason to be was the existing conflict between the counts of Empuries - who ruled over most of the area around the town - and the counts of Barcelona, the most powerful of Catalonia at that time, who also had great power over the Mediterranean.
In order to control the moves of the counts of Empuries, the court of Barcelona commanded Bernat de Llabià, the governor of the Royal town of Torroella de Montgrí, to supervise the building of a fortress on top of the Montgrí mountain. Work started in 1294 but the fortress was never completed as is obvious today. After those days, the fortress has lost its strategic value but has instead become a symbol of the region.
Architectural Details
The structure of the fortress corresponds to a very specific plan. Its style is one of the Middle Eastern fortresses that became popular in Europe after the Crusades. They featured a regular plan with cylindrical towers attached within the walls.
The only parts erected were the perimeter walls, forming a square of 31m along each side, and the four round towers at its corners. The walls are 31m high with battlements along the top.
The interior of the enclosure was laid out around a square, stone-paved central courtyard. Underneath this, there remains a large cistern for collecting rainwater.
Around the courtyard, four wings of auxiliary buildings were planned out but never built. However the interior surfaces of the wall retain certain elements (toothing stones and springings for arches and vaults) which enable us to visualise the structure that these buildings were to have.
Outside the castle, the former quarries can be seen, as well as the remains of a wall in the south face and a large cistern on the northern slope of the mountains.
Old pictures of Torroella and l'Estartit
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