Village
Vic is the capital of the comarca of Osona, in the province of Barcelona, and the historic capital of Central Catalonia, known as the Ciutat dels Sants (City of the Saints). Its name comes from the Latin vicus, 'suburb', and points to its origin as a settlement formed next to the episcopal see of Osona: the old Roman city of Ausa, which gave its name to the diocese, documented since the year 516, and to the county created in the 9th century, was damaged after the Muslim occupation and the revolt of Aissó, until in the late 9th century Count Wifredo el Velloso promoted its restoration with a new cathedral at the foot of the hill. Next to it grew the suburb that gave the city its name, officially Vic since 1982, which today retains one of the richest historic centres in the country.
Monument
Former castle of the Montcada family, integrated into the old town of Vic, where it occupied the upper part of the city from its erection at the end of the eleventh century; it came to be known as the tower or royal palace of Vic. It was a Romanesque building with thick walls, 1.2 metres wide, with spacious rooms and small openings on the ground floor, regular windows on the upper floors and a porticoed gallery, arranged around a central courtyard built around the Roman temple of Vic. From around 1088 it was under the control of the Montcada family, who turned it into the administrative centre of their properties, and it served as a residence, seat of the royal curia, granary and prison. It was largely demolished in 1882; today only remains of the north and west sectors survive, next to the Roman temple.
Monument
The Roman Temple of Vic was built in the early second century, at the highest point of the terrain, next to the river Mèder, near its confluence with the Gurri, for the Roman city of Ausa. For centuries it remained hidden inside the castle of the Montcada family, built at the end of the eleventh century, whose walls incorporated the temple's walls; its existence was not discovered until 1882, when the old building was demolished. The cella measures 12.10 by 10.10 metres and stands on a podium with a hexastyle portico, columns with Ionic bases and Corinthian capitals, and an Ionic entablature of large stone blocks. It is not known to which deity it was dedicated. After serving as a fortress in the Saracen period and as a residence of the Montcada family, it was also a prison and a granary before its rediscovery by canon Collell.
Monument
Cathedral built during the episcopate of Abbot Oliba, in the first half of the eleventh century, and consecrated in 1038 by archbishop Wifredo de Narbona; between 1781 and 1803 it was remodelled under Josep Moretó i Codina, who gave it its present neoclassical facade. It preserves the mid-eleventh-century Romanesque bell tower, in Lombard style, 46 metres high over six storeys, the tallest in Catalonia, and a crypt with capitals from the old pre-Romanesque cathedral. The cloister combines a fourteenth-century Gothic storey with another Romanesque one from the twelfth. Inside, the mural paintings that Josep Maria Sert made in 1930 on the Redemption stand out; in the Civil War a deliberately started fire brought down part of the building and destroyed much of its heritage, later restored.
Monument
The walls of Vic, from the fourteenth century, enclosed the medieval and early modern core of the city, and they included, besides the wall curtain, defence towers, gates and access bridges, as well as moats. Their perimeter ran along the present-day ramblas of the Hospital, of Sant Domènec, of the Obispado, dels Montcada, of the Passeig and of the Carme, generally inside the properties that today face onto these streets. Various archaeological interventions in the old town have documented stretches of wall and moat beneath the subsoil of streets and buildings, as well as remains of historic gates, among them the portals of Malloles, of Gurb, of Manlleu and of Santa Eulàlia. Declared a cultural asset of national interest, they are today one of the main testimonies of the city's fortified precinct.
Monument
Ensemble of the historic centre of Vic, of Gothic and Baroque date, declared a cultural asset of national interest. It is one of the most evocative medieval ensembles in Catalonia: it grew up around three cores, the cathedral, the castle and the Mercadal, and was enclosed by a wall with turrets that was rebuilt in the fourteenth century.
Monument
The Episcopal Museum of Vic (Barcelona) is one of the reference museums for Catalan medieval art, with more than 29,000 Romanesque and Gothic pieces. It was inaugurated in 1891 by bishop Josep Morgades, based on the Lapidary Museum created after the discovery of the Roman temple of Vic in 1882. Josep Gudiol i Conill and, later, Eduard Junyent notably expanded its collections throughout the twentieth century. In 1995 the current building was erected, the work of Alfons Milà and Frederic Correa, and in 2001 the Generalitat declared it a museum of national interest. Its galleries, arranged chronologically, bring together pre-Romanesque archaeology and lapidary work, Romanesque painting on wall and panel, with works such as those from Osormort or the Vall de Ribes, and a notable Gothic collection with altarpieces by Lluís Borrassà and Ramon de Mur.
Monument
Large square-shaped arcaded plaza, the largest in the city, situated in the highest part of the vila vella of Vic, known as Dalt de Vic, and the heart of its social and commercial life. Arcades run along the four sides of the space, open and unpaved in the centre, where fairs, markets and concerts are held. On the southeast side stands the town hall, a Gothic building with a bell tower dating from 1388; on the southwest, the Casa Comella, a nineteenth-century modernist palace through which the main entrance to the square opens. The weekly markets are held on Tuesday and Saturday mornings, and throughout the year they host events such as the Mercat del Ram, the Vicantic or the Mercat Medieval.
Monument
The Albergueria de Vic is an old medieval hostel, already documented in 1064, in the eleventh century, which took in the poor and travellers in the old town of the city. The fullest account of its origin dates from 1080, when bishop Berenguer Sunifred de Lluçà granted the hospitaller canon who ran it a residence near the river Mèder and the church of Sant Pere; in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it was also the residence of the abbot of the monastery of l'Estany, and it also preserves sixteenth-century alterations. Archaeological excavations carried out between 1990 and 1994 revealed occupation phases from the Roman period, from which two large ashlar blocks are preserved in the northwest corner of the Romanesque room, and of the original building a large rectangular room covered with a barrel vault is preserved.
Monument
Former 13th-century trading exchange, with Gothic and Baroque features.
Monument
The Palacio Episcopal de Vic is a building complex designed in the late 17th century by the architect Fra Josep de la Concepció, with Baroque and Neoclassical elements, protected as a Bien Cultural de Interés Local (local-level heritage protection status). It is organised around a central courtyard, with ground-floor and two-storey buildings; on the south side, the façade is crowned by two towers with galleries and topped with a barbican of wooden corbels. It replaced a medieval palace, of which two arcades of the courtyard survive and, beneath the present building, two parallel vaulted halls. In 1671 Bishop Jaume Copons and the chapter decided to raise the new building; it was extended in 1806, when Santa María street was opened, and in 1915 the gallery above the main portal was added.
Monument
Sant Just de Vic is a Gothic church in the old town of Vic, in the comarca of Osona, protected as a bien cultural de interés local (local-level heritage protection status). It has a single nave divided into three bays and a pentagonal apse, covered by a ribbed vault whose ribs cross in medallions depicting a bishop, Christ on the cross and the Holy Family. The façade, which was once part of the old seminary, opens with a voussoired portal and a large oculus, the church's only source of light. It was built from 1538 on the initiative of Canon Vivet, on the spot where tradition placed the birth of Sant Just. Later the Jesuits added side aisles and a Baroque altarpiece, removed in the early 20th century to restore the church's Gothic appearance, the only one the city retains in this style and evidence of its survival in Catalonia as late as the 16th century, when the Renaissance had already been adopted in the rest of the peninsula and in France.
Activity
Annual fair of Vic (Osona) held before Palm Sunday and Holy Week, one of the oldest and most important in Catalonia: the Vic market is already documented in a royal charter of the year 888 and was always held on Saturdays, in what is today the Plaza Major. Of agricultural and livestock origin, it owes its name to the blessing of palm and olive branches carried out on Palm Sunday, which is why the market held the previous Saturday came to be known as the Mercat del Ram (Market of the Branch). After a decline in the 16th and 17th centuries due to wars, it progressively recovered and in 1930 took on the modern character of an agricultural machinery fair and livestock show, to which gastronomic, cultural and sporting activities have since been added, as well as the parade of the town's giants.
Curiosity
Llonganissa de Vic is made by filling a long, narrow casing with lean minced pork seasoned with pepper and other spices, which is cured hanging without prior cooking; it has held the European Protected Geographical Indication seal since 2001. It is already documented in the fourteenth century in the Episcopal Archive of Vic, and its fame spread at the end of the nineteenth century, when King Alfonso XII invariably visited the longaniza factory during his stays in the city. It is made with the best lean cuts of pork, seasoned only with salt and black pepper, and preferably stuffed into cular casing, giving the so-called llonganissa culara. The drying, entirely natural, lasts a minimum of forty-five days and is what gives it its characteristic aroma and flavour.
Curiosity
A light and spongy cake, crisp on the outside and tender inside, typical of Vic's confectionery.
Historical milestone
After the revolt of 826 and the depopulation of the territory, Guifré el Pilós restored the county of Osona in 878 and the episcopal see was re-established in 886 over the former Roman Ausa. The new centre, Vicus Ausonae, gave Vic its name and fixed the capital status of the Plana.
Historical milestone
On 20 February 1810, during the Peninsular War, the French and Italian troops of General Souham defeated Enrique José O'Donnell's army on the plain between Vic and Malla. The patriots lost about 1,500 men and 2,000 prisoners. After the fall of Girona in December 1809, Souham received orders to disperse the patriot forces; his troops, together with an Italian corps under General Pino, occupied the Garrotxa and reached Olot by Christmas. The Junta Corregimental of Vic, faced with the threat, had already fled twice to take refuge in Alpens, the first time on 12 January, when the French entered the city without resistance and occupied it until the 21st, and the second on 2 February, before the arrival of an imperial corps of about 10,000 men and 1,500 horses.
Historical milestone
Antoni Maria Claret, who had arrived at the seminary of Vic in 1829, founded in the city on 16 July 1849 the Congregation of Missionary Sons of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The Claretian order afterwards spread through America, Africa and Asia.
Historical milestone
The philosopher and publicist Jaume Balmes was born in Vic on 28 August 1810 and died in the same city in 1848, at 37, of tuberculosis. Author of El criterio and of Filosofía fundamental, he is buried in the cloister of the cathedral of Vic.
Food and drink
Elongated onion, of purple skin and intense flavour, sown in winter and harvested at the end of June in the vegetable gardens of the Plana de Vic. It is eaten raw in salad or roasted over embers and it is one of the identifying vegetables of the comarca of Osona.
Food and drink
The fuet is a thin, straight longaniza of lean pork and bacon, with the white bloom characteristic of curing. Osona is its main producing centre and the somalla and the secallona are thinner variants without bloom, usual in the charcuteries of Vic.