Montgrí, Medes Islands and Baix Ter Natural Park

On the cliffs of Cap de la Barra, at an altitude of approximately 85 m, there is a viewpoint with a beautiful view of the Medes Islands, with views of Meda Gran and Medallot, as well as the El Molinet rock. You can see the port of L'Estartit and the castle of Montgrí. The path is rugged and can be dangerous when there is a lot of wind.

It is a 225.4-m mountain that dominates the town of L'Estartit. At the top there is a geodesic vertex (and is crowned by radio communication antennas. According to historical references between 1708 and the 12th century, at the top there would have been the castle of Rocamaura, property of the Counts of Empúries, but there are no remains left.

It is a lagoon, which was drained towards the middle of the 18th century to use the land for agriculture. This practice was quite common throughout Spain. However, it is a space halfway between the wetlands of the Alt Empordà plain (the wetlands linked to the mouths of the Muga and Fluvià rivers) and the wetlands of the Baix Empordà plain (linked to the mouths of the Ter and Daró rivers). Despite the almost total drying of the lake, it presents several botanical and faunal peculiarities that make it a very exceptional space from an ecological and conservationist point of view.

Impressive views over the continental dune, the Montgrí and La Muntanya Gran.

The Ter Vell is, as its name suggests, an old mouth of the Ter. The area covers about 32 hectares. It is a wetland formed by a set of wetlands and freshwater lagoons fed by the surplus irrigation of the adjacent agricultural plain and by precipitation waters. In the beach area there are also secondary mobile dunes (white dunes) and stabilized dunes. The area is an important wintering point for birds. It has a visit itinerary and two observatories.

It originates in an old riverbed of the Ter and is located between the current mouth and the Ter Vell. Around the lagoon there is an interesting display of brackish vegetation. It has an itinerary for the visit and different information signs. The area is used by water birds.

The river used to flow into three places on the coast. In addition to the one at La Gola, there was one between l'Escala and Sant Martí d'Empúries and the other near l'Estartit, in what is now called Ter Vell; between this and the current mouth there are a series of coastal lagoons. The northernmost course was cut off around 1302, near Canet de la Tallada, by works carried out by the Count of Empúries Ponç Hug IV, which were the result of a lawsuit with King Jaume el Just, Lord of Torroella. However, floods in 1311 broke the banks and the river re-routed its branch in a northeasterly direction. Despite this, the king, in agreement with the affected towns, saw the benefit of the Ter's floodplains for agriculture. The Ter remained for several centuries with two mouths, the Ter Vell and the Gola, leaving a deltaic island in between. In order to exploit this island for agriculture, the northern arm was cut in the 18th century.

is an irrigation canal that captures the waters of the Rec del Molí and the Daró river, runs through the plain of the lower Ter and Daró and flows into the stretch of the Daró Vell already entered the municipal area of Fontanilles. From this point the waters form a network of canals that converge in the rec del Molí de Pals. There are two historical documents that highlight the great importance of the rec de Gualta. In the Histoire militaire de Louis Le Grand all the battles that took place under the reign of King Louis XIV, known as the Sun King, are narrated. There is the story of the Battle of Verges, a confrontation that took place between the French army, between Verges and Torroella de Montgrí, on the left bank of the Ter and the Spanish army positioned on the right of the Ter between Verges and Gualta. Here a very deep canal is mentioned that is certainly the rec de Gualta and this suggests that the rec del molí already existed in the 17th century. The bridge crosses the irrigation canal in a place where birds can be observed.

It is a fortress built between 1294 and 1302. The origin of the construction is found in the rivalry between King James II the Just and the Counts of Empúries. It was started to be built in 1294 by Bernat de Llabià, governor of Torroella, as a control point for a possible confrontation between James the Just and Ponç V, Count of Empúries. The date of the beginning of the works is evident from the letter from James II to his procurator Bernat de Llevià, a resident of Torroella, in which the king entrusted him with the administration and direction of the works of the castle. The construction was financed by the royal income of Torroella and a tax on the oxen of Ullà and Albons. Three years later, Bernat de Llevià received custody of the castle. The works were interrupted in 1301 without ever being finished, due to the consolidation of the power of the County of Barcelona against the County of Empúries. The loss of importance of the Emporia Count's house made the completion of the work unnecessary, although the exact date of interruption is known. The last news we have about the castle dates from 1413, and relates it to the Llevià family. By the 20th century, abandonment had led the building to a worrying state of degradation. The Generalitat, the Provincial Council and the City Council commissioned a consolidation project. The castles of Bellcaire and Montgrí are witnesses to the monarchy's fierce struggle against feudal power. The struggle ended with the incorporation of the county of Empúries into the crown after causing the ruin of the region and the diversion of the Ter river from the northern plain of Montgrí to the southern plain in the first half of the 14th century. This diversion caused the formation of the continental dunes of Torroella.

It is a hermitage of moderate dimensions in the municipality of Torroella de Montgrí. The hermitage is hidden inside the Santa Caterina valley. The written record that has survived before the 17th century is scarce and most of the information preserved at the beginning of the 21st century is due to the compilation made by the notary Sàbat in the last third of the 17th century from municipal parchments. It is worth noting the significant decrease in this record that the various occupations suffered by the Castilian and French troops of the town hall, the University of Torroella, produced. The arrival of monks from Montserrat was due to the schism in the West that caused several monks to leave due to theological discrepancies. Arriving in Torroella, lands under the protection of the King of Aragon, then John the Hunter, a king with a special predilection for the Empordà, they were welcomed. The first works were paid for by the pious and well-off inhabitants of Torroella. A new altar was erected in the first third of the 15th century. However, in 1893 the temple was in a state of ruin and Pere Coll, a resident of Torroella and philanthropist, paid for some remodeling work that was completed in 1915.

It is an old watchtower of Torroella de Montgrí declared a cultural asset of national interest on the top of the Torre Moratxa hill. The remains of a tower, of a room partly excavated in the rock. The tower is about 4 meters high and inside it preserves a dome in the lower part. The permanent is of roughly hewn stones. This tower, dated towards the end of the medieval period, seems to have been built after the other remaining walls, which could correspond to the old Rocamaura castle.

The first documentary reference is from 980, when the lloc d'Alburne was established in the comtat d'Empúries. At the beginning of the 13th century, the Destorrent family held the feu of the elders of Torroella de Montgrí, and in 1269, the direct domain passed to the hands of Dalmau VI of Rocabertí, vescomte de Rocabertí, which in 1271 exchanged Albons and Torroella for other castles with infant Pere. In 1311, King Jaume II will come under the direct feudal dominion of Albons to the Count of Empúries Ponç V, who will begin the fortification of the town. The king, who was guarding his Montgrí castle, was going to prohibit the continuation of the works on both the Albons and Bellcaire castles. will become an internship for different men fins Joan de Vilallonga i Girona (1944).

The Martina tower, which used to be called the Mirona tower (it took its name from the owners, the Mir family), is attached to a large farmhouse. It is a cylindrical, tall and narrow tower with a single-pitched roof.

It is a fortified farmhouse to the east of the village of Sobrestany, north of Montgrí and accompanying a previously built farmhouse. The tower has a square plan - following the typology typical of the 16th and 17th centuries, when it was built - and is separate from the house. It is made of stone and has well-carved ashlars at the corners. On each of the four facades there is a battlement and loopholes for firearms. It is very similar to the Begura Tower.

The defence tower was built in 1561 by Caterina Bagura, born in Ullà, her maiden name was Caterina Padrola and when she married Antoni Bagur in 1516, she took her husband's surname, feminized Bagura, which gave the farmhouse its name. The tower, with a square base, was built to defend against attacks by Ottoman and Barbary pirates.

Mas Ral is a fortified farmhouse in the municipality of Torroella de Montgrí. In the area between Torroella de Montgrí and L'Estartit there is a group of fortified farmhouses intended for surveillance and defense against possible attacks from the sea. The Mas Ral tower was probably built in the 16th-17th centuries, when Ottoman and Barbary pirates ravaged the peninsular coasts.

There is a large opening on the south face that is visible from the town of Torroella de Montgrí, a few meters below the summit. The ceiling is several meters high and the floor slopes slightly outwards. It is a rocky shelter that was occupied by hominids during the Paleolithic. Inside the cave was found the Pic del Montgrí.

It is located on the southern slope of the Ullà mountain in the Montgrí massif. Smaller in size than the Cau del Duc del Montgrí, this cave has an inward inclination, forming a basin that allowed the accumulation and fixation of sediment levels of prehistoric interest in a calcareous breccia type material.

The archaeological complex of Santa Maria del Palau is a medieval building consisting of a small Roman temple in ruins and vestiges of a small town and the complex had its origins in Roman times (second century BC). of the important road of Empúries, an old Roman road that created the massís of Montgrí and connected Empúries with Girona. It is also believed that this population is going to maintain the Lower Middle Ages, but that it was abandoned when the Scale began to be inhabited. The church is a troba engraved in the Rationes decimarum of the years 1279 and 1280 with the llatí name of Sancte Marie de Palacio. In two gazetteers of the diocese of Girona from the darreries of the 14th century it is stated that it was a capella, with an attached priest, of the parish of Sant Joan de Bellcaire.

It belonged to the counts of Empúries and later passed to the bishopric of Girona. In its streets it preserves old Gothic and Renaissance buildings from its medieval past. The church of Santa Maria is neoclassical on another previous Romanesque building from 1362, with the dedication of Sant Andreu, of which a small part of the apse is preserved. Inside you can venerate the polychrome carving of the Virgin of the Pit, Romanesque from the old monastery of Santa Maria d'Ullà. Near Ullà is the Hermitage of Santa Caterina (Torroella de Montgrí), which was begun in 1392.

Bellcaire d'Empordà is mentioned in a document from the year 881 under the name: Bedenga. Later it belonged to the county of Empúries and was the usual residence of the counts from the end of the 13th century and the beginning of the 14th century. Like most of the towns on the Empordà plain, Bellcaire is perched on top of a small hill from which the plain is dominated, which, to the north, had been occupied by the Bellcaire lake. This lake, like many others in the area, was drained in the mid-18th century in order to use the land for farming. The town is crossed by the Rec del Molí which is used for irrigation but which, in the past, was used to provide hydraulic energy to the various mills in the area and, in particular, the Bellcaire one.

The first references to Sobrestany date from the 16th century, coinciding with the drying up of the Bellcaire Lake. In fact, the etymology presumes its location and indicates this elevated position above the lake. Its population probably increased in the 18th century with the concessions that the University of Torroella, the civil government body of the time, granted to cultivate and pasture the Montgrí massif. Therefore, the village would have always been linked to agricultural activities.

Long-running dive centre with multi-lingual guides and instructors (PADI). British run so very good English and popular with Brits. One hard boat with O2 and first aid, zodiac and RIB, deck shower and WC, but no lift. Ute to take kit to the marina, lockers to leave kit at the shop with rinsing tanks. About 10 min walk to the marina.

The dive center is located in the campsite "Les Medes" and offers all the services. classroom equipped with all the teaching elements of SSI for theory sessions, TV, DVD and internet connection. Pool for the first practices with the team during your diving course. 20 complete equipment Mares Diving Center of all sizes renewed every 2 years. Space to sweeten the equipment and save them for stays of several days.

shop and reservations central

They have glass-bottom boats and also classic sailing boats. visits to Medes islands and Nearby caves

The Núria is a classic fishing boat, 9 meters long, adapted to transport passengers. It has capacity for about twenty people and has windows in the hull to see the seabed.