The Most Beautiful Places in Girona
5 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Girona are Sant Pere de Rodes, Castellfollit de la Roca and Girona Cathedral. The list covers 5 places. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Girona, the northeastern corner of Catalonia, packs the Pyrenees, the rocky Costa Brava, the plain of the Empordà and an extinct volcanic field into a small province. That variety of ground is matched by depth of history: this was the heartland of the early Catalan counties, and its Romanesque monasteries date from the time when Catalonia itself was taking shape. Later came Gothic Girona and, in the twentieth century, Salvador Dalí, who never strayed far from the landscape of his birth.
Sant Pere de Rodes, a Benedictine monastery high on the Verdera ridge, looks down over Cap de Creus and the sea. Santa Maria de Ripoll, founded in 879 by Count Wilfred the Hairy, keeps a carved portal often called a Bible in stone and served as a burial place for the counts of Barcelona. In the city of Girona the cathedral has the widest Gothic nave in the world, reached by a long Baroque staircase that appeared in Game of Thrones.
Castellfollit de la Roca shows the volcanic side of the province: its houses line the edge of a basalt cliff left by ancient lava flows and cut by two rivers in the Garrotxa. In Figueres, the Dalí Theatre-Museum rises from the ruins of the town theatre, crowned by a glass dome, and the artist lies buried in its crypt. Monastery, cathedral, village and museum together give a fair measure of the region.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sant Pere de Rodes | Monastery | |
| 2 | Castellfollit de la Roca | Most beautiful village | |
| 3 | Girona Cathedral | Cathedral | |
| 4 | Dalí Theatre and Museum | Museum | |
| 5 | Santa Maria de Ripoll | Abbey |
01 Sant Pere de Rodes
Monasterio de San Pedro de Roda
Spain42.324° N 3.167° E
Pixel · Public domain High on the slope of Verdera mountain, above the bays of El Port de la Selva and Llançà, the great Romanesque abbey of Sant Pere de Rodes looks out over the whole northern coast of Cap de Creus.
Did you know? Jubilees in honour of the Holy Cross drew pilgrims to the abbey until its decline in the 17th century, and the church's ambulatory was suited to such crowds.
02 Castellfollit de la Roca
Castellfullit de la Roca
Spain42.221° N 2.551° E
Eckhard Henkel · CC BY-SA 3.0 de Castellfollit de la Roca is a village perched on the edge of a cliff. Its houses stand in a single tight row along the top of a basalt escarpment more than 50 metres high, their back walls flush with the drop, and from the valley below the whole village seems to grow out of the dark rock.
Did you know? The church of Sant Salvador is documented from the 13th century and still preserves a late Romanesque window in basalt stonework.
03 Girona Cathedral
Catedral de Santa María de Gerona
Spain41.987° N 2.826° E
Image by Hans from Pixabay Step inside Girona Cathedral and the space opens into a single Gothic nave nearly 23 m wide, with no columns at all between its walls.
Did you know? A stained-glass window on the north side is about 14 metres tall and 3 metres wide.
04 Dalí Theatre and Museum
Spain42.268° N 2.959° E
Image by juliacasado1 from Pixabay The building was already notable, in a way, before Dalí ever touched it. In 1918, a fourteen-year-old Salvador Dalí showed his work publicly for the first time in a group exhibition inside Figueres' old Municipal Theatre — the same building that, decades later, he would turn into his masterpiece.
Did you know? In the open courtyard where the audience once sat stands a full-size car installation based on Dalí's 1938 work Rainy Taxi.
05 Santa Maria de Ripoll
Monasterio de Santa María de Ripoll
Spain42.201° N 2.191° E
Pitxiquin · CC BY-SA 4.0 The west front of Santa Maria de Ripoll carries one of the greatest sculptural ensembles of Romanesque Europe: a broad stone portal of the mid-12th century, carved in horizontal bands like the pages of an illuminated book.
Did you know? Under Abbot Oliba the library grew to 246 manuscripts by 1046, including texts on mathematics and astronomy translated from Arabic.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Girona?
- On our list, Sant Pere de Rodes ranks first, followed by Castellfollit de la Roca and Girona Cathedral.
- Why is Castellfollit de la Roca built on a cliff?
- The village sits on a basalt escarpment formed by lava flows from the Garrotxa volcanic field and carved by the rivers Fluvià and Toll. Its houses were built right up to the edge of the rock.
- Where is Salvador Dalí buried?
- Dalí was buried in 1989 in a crypt beneath the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, the museum he designed himself in his home town.
- What is special about Girona Cathedral?
- Its single Gothic nave is the widest of any Gothic church in the world. The steps leading up to its facade were used in Game of Thrones.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Girona?
- In our collection, the places in Girona are most often cathedrals (1), monasteries (1), abbeys (1) and museums (1).
- How many places are on this list in Girona?
- The list covers 5 places.