Castellfollit de la Roca — most beautiful village
Eckhard Henkel · CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Castellfollit de la Roca

Castellfullit de la Roca

  • Elevation296 m
  • 2 min read
  • 42.221° N 2.551° E

Interesting facts

  • The basalt cliff beneath the village runs for nearly a kilometre.
  • The two lava flows forming the cliff are dated to about 217,000 and 192,000 years ago.
  • The rock face shows prismatic basalt columns, formed as the thick lava cooled and cracked in a regular pattern.
  • The church of Sant Salvador is documented from the 13th century and still preserves a late Romanesque window in basalt stonework.
  • The old church at the edge of the cliff no longer serves for worship and now hosts exhibitions.
  • A basalt quarry near the village has been worked commercially since 1929.
  • Population peaked at about 1,200 in 1910 and has since settled at under a thousand.
  • In 1874 the nearby Battle of Toix pitted Carlist forces against Republican troops during the Third Carlist War.
  • The village's first pair of festival giants was made in 1906 by the sculptor Antoni Collellmir.

Why it is worth it

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. The spur ends where the Fluvià and Toronell rivers meet, with the bell tower of the old church rising above the houses.

The cliff is a product of the Garrotxa volcanic field, where some forty extinct volcanoes are scattered around Olot; the last eruption, at Croscat, took place about 11,000 years ago. Two lava flows from neighbouring volcanoes, one from the Batet area near Olot and a later one from the Begudà valley, poured down the river valleys and settled one on top of the other. Over time the two rivers cut down on either side, leaving the hard rock standing as a long, narrow ridge. Erosion at the foot of the wall continues: over the years parts of back yards and buildings have broken away and fallen into the Fluvià. The village is part of the Garrotxa Volcanic Zone Natural Park.

The place is old. A castle here is recorded as "Kastro Follit" in 1006, and by 1110 the documents speak of the rock of Castrofollit; the words "de la Roca" were added later to tell it apart from two other Catalan villages of the same name. The walled medieval town was destroyed by the earthquakes of 1427–1428, changed hands in the Catalan Civil War of the 15th century, and saw a battle in 1657 during the Reapers' War; French troops pulled down the castle in 1691. Today the municipality, one of the smallest in Catalonia at under one square kilometre, has about a thousand inhabitants, almost all of them living on the rock.

Getting there

Castellfollit de la Roca lies in the Garrotxa district of the province of Girona, about 7 km from Olot. The nearest airport is Girona–Costa Brava Airport (GRO), about 39 km away.

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Girona 5The Most Beautiful Places in Catalonia 26The Most Beautiful Places in Spain 150The Most Beautiful Villages 66

From the encyclopaedia

Castellfollit de la Roca is a municipality in the comarca of Garrotxa, in the Province of Girona, Catalonia, Spain. The urban area is bordered by the confluence of the Fluvià and Toronell rivers, between which the town's basalt cliff rises.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

42.22139, 2.55083per Wikidata