Village
La Bisbal d'Empordà is the capital of the Baix Empordà comarca, in the province of Girona, set on the Empordà plain next to the Gavarres massif and watered by the Daró river. It has been Catalonia's leading pottery centre for more than 500 years, with numerous ceramics workshops and shops along its streets and a museum, the Terracotta Museu, devoted to that tradition. Its origins go back to the Roman villa of Fontanetum, and its name derives from the town's grant to the bishop of Girona in Carolingian times, who established the parish in the year 904 and a castle in the 11th century; in the late Middle Ages it was walled. In 1869 it was the scene of the Foc de la Bisbal, a clash between government troops and a Republican band of about two thousand men.
Monument
The former palace of the bishops of Girona, Romanesque in origin (12th century) with Gothic and Renaissance alterations, on the Plaça del Castell in the historic centre of la Bisbal.
Monument
A Gothic-Renaissance castle (13th-18th centuries) on a promontory on the outskirts of la Bisbal d'Empordà, now converted into a hotel, with remains of its wall and fortified enclosure.
Monument
Remains of the medieval wall that surrounded the old town of La Bisbal d'Empordà, declared an asset of national cultural interest. The fortification followed the line of the present-day streets of Cavallers, Valls, Ample and Valls de Colomer, and the road to Calonge. The most visible element today is the gateway at the end of Carrer de la Riera, much altered, with the tower's original masonry hidden beneath the render; it consists of a round arch on the outside and a segmental arch on the inside of the old enclosure. The gateway is built into the Can Caramany building, the only surviving trace of the town's old medieval fortification, capital of the comarca of Baix Empordà and known for its pottery tradition.
Monument
Old snow pits dug between the 14th and 19th centuries in the les Gavarres massif, used to store ice before modern refrigeration; listed as a Zone of Ethnological Interest.
Activity
Weekly market with nearly 700 years of history, in the historic centre of the comarca's capital. It has been held on Fridays ever since 1322, when King Jaime the Just granted permission to hold it on that day, a custom kept up ever since. It takes place in the Plaça Major, the former Plaça del Castell. In the 18th century it drew residents from more than fifty villages, both from the coast and inland, as well as merchants from Barcelona.
Activity
An annual fair bringing together ceramic craftspeople from la Bisbal and elsewhere, with exhibitions and sales of their work.
Curiosity
The Terracotta Museu, in La Bisbal d'Empordà, is a museum of traditional, industrial, artistic and contemporary ceramics opened in 1991, housed in the former Terracotta-Fuster ceramic tile factory, founded in 1928 in a building dating from 1922 and active until 1984. The town council acquired it in 1987 and refurbished it, incorporating elements of the production process itself into the visit — tanks, chimneys, kilns. Ceramics has been the city's most emblematic activity since at least 1511, the year the trade of potter is first documented. Between 2010 and 2015 the building underwent a complete refurbishment, and the museum reopened in December 2015 with more than ten thousand pieces spanning the local pottery industry and a collection of ceramics from across the Iberian Peninsula.
Monument
A Romanesque chapel built into the castle-palace of the bishops of Girona, in the eastern corner of the upper level, at terrace height: a nave with a slightly pointed barrel vault, a semicircular apse covered by a quarter-sphere, and a doorway of two receding round arches, the work of an advanced stage of the 12th century.
Monument
11th-century Romanesque church in Sant Pol, a small hamlet of little more than a dozen stone farmhouses in the Gavarres massif, an area declared of natural interest, within the municipality of La Bisbal d'Empordà. The place, an old peasant quarter of la Bisbal, is already cited in the early 10th century, in 904, as the vilar “villare Perductus”, belonging to the bishopric of Girona; its church, built somewhat later, never depended on the rector of la Bisbal and formed an independent parish. It has a bell-gable -popularly called “cadireta”- from the 18th century and a restored facade that reproduces the baroque sgraffito of that period. Today 9 people live in the hamlet and another 20 in the surrounding farmhouses.
Activity
Main festival of La Bisbal d'Empordà, capital of the Baix Empordà region, held from 14 to 18 August in honour of its patroness, the Virgin Mary. It begins on the 14th with the trencament del càntir, a solemn act in which a red ceramic pitcher, made each year by a different potter, is broken. On 15 August the Ball de l'Àliga, the oldest eagle in Catalonia, dances before the altar of Santa María, and on the 16th the correfoc is held. The programme brings together around eight events organised by the city's associations and organisations, including the ball de gegants i capgrossos, and it has its own sardana, Festa Anyal, composed by Josep Maria Soler i Montaner.
Historical milestone
James II granted in 1322 to the episcopal town the privilege of holding a market every Friday, a right that ordered the economic life of the central Empordà for centuries and that the town has kept uninterrupted to this day.
Food and drink
A sausage of lean pork and fatback cooked with sugar and lemon, made in the Empordà since the Middle Ages; it is eaten fried or over embers, often with caramelized apple, and serves as both a starter and a dessert.