Logbook · 6 places

What to see and do in Manlleu

What to see and do in Manlleu (Osona, Barcelona): 6 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 2 Monuments · 1 Activities · 2 Historical milestones

When to go to Manlleu: festival calendar

August: Manlleu Main Festival (August 11-16)

How far each place is from the centre of Manlleu

Towns near Manlleu

Spain › Catalonia › Barcelona › Osona › Manlleu

What to see and do in Manlleu

Manlleu
Village
Manlleu is an industrial town in the Osona comarca, in the province of Barcelona, on the banks of the river Ter, which has shaped its landscape and urban development to the point that it is known as the Capital of the Ter. It preserves its old medieval walls. Industrialisation arrived in the mid-19th century with the construction of an industrial canal that powered the textile mills built along the river, an activity that has defined its character over the last 150 years. The territory also preserves older human remains, from Neolithic finds near the hermitage of San Jaime to a Bronze Age settlement, dating between 1200 and 650 BC, in the Fugurull area, the substrate of the Iberian tribes that would later emerge.
Walls of Manlleu
Monument
Remains of the wall that protected the original nucleus of Manlleu, formed around the church of Santa Maria, documented since the year 906, on the hillock now called Dalt Vila. The enclosure, dated to the 13th century, had three gateways and followed the layout of today's streets and squares; it was built of stone ashlar and large rounded cobbles bound with mortar. Between the 14th and 16th centuries the town grew beyond the enclosure, and each expansion added a new protective wall. In the late 16th century the present-day Plaça de Dalt Vila was opened for the market, the wall's last extension, which split the south gate into the Portal del Comte and the Portal de la Plaça; there were also the gates of Torelló, with a stone relief of 1582 depicting a hand, the symbol of Manlleu, and of Sant Higini.
Mas Bellfort
Monument
The Mas Bellfort, already documented in 1161 as a domus or fortified house belonging to the lesser nobility, is a rectangular-plan farmhouse with a voussoired doorway and Gothic-style windows on the first floor, located in the district of Manlleu. To the left stands a four-storey square tower with corners of well-worked stone and Gothic windows, three of them walled up; above the main entrance doorway, whose lintel is decorated with volutes, is another blocked window bearing the date 1577. From the 16th century it was inhabited by peasant farmers and lost its noble status, but during the 16th and 17th centuries its owners, the Bellfort family, took an active part in the struggles between the nyerros and cadells factions, to which the defensive tower still standing bears witness.
Manlleu Main Festival
Activity
The Festa Major of Manlleu is celebrated from 11 to 16 August, with the traditional Festa del Serpent on the 14th, one of the most distinctive legendary events in Osona's festive calendar.
Industrial canal of the Ter in Manlleu
Historical milestone
The opening of the industrial canal between 1841 and 1848 diverted water from the Ter to drive the factories of Manlleu and set the town's industrialisation going. Textiles occupied the town for more than a century and a half and the Museu del Ter today interprets that legacy.
Colònia Rusiñol
Historical milestone
A textile colony also known as Can Remisa, born in 1866 upstream of the town centre of Manlleu, on the left bank of the Ter, with the Remisa industrialists, and later bought by the manufacturer Jaume Rusiñol i Bosch. In 1889 it was renamed Rusiñol Hermanos, with the painter Santiago Rusiñol among the heirs, who gave the owners' house the name Cau Faluga, in tribute to the Cau Ferrat of Sitges. After production ceased in 1912, the factory was leased out and in 1940 it was acquired by the firm Llobet i Guri to make use of its water drop; in 1980 the Claramunt and Rovira families revived it to spin cotton and other fibres. It closed in 2009, the last factory on the middle Ter, and the complex remained dominated by a cylindrical chimney over 40 metres tall.