Village
Olot is the capital of the Garrotxa, in the province of Girona, with 39,519 inhabitants (INE 2025), in the upper valley of the Fluvià river. Its entire municipal area lies within the Garrotxa Volcanic Zone natural park, whose best-known extinct volcanoes are Santa Margarita, Croscat -which shows its geological strata where the land has been cut away- and Montsacopa. The Parc Nou is home to the Volcano Museum and the Botanical Garden. Since the 19th century the city has been home to a religious statuary industry, with workshops such as El Arte Cristiano, where sculptors such as Miguel Blay and Josep Clarà worked, the seed of its modernist heritage. It preserves Catalonia's oldest bullring, from 1859, and is known for its 'volcanic cuisine', including the potatoes of Olot.
Monument
The cloister of the former Carmelite convent of Olot (La Garrotxa, Girona) is a work of 1603, on two floors with an irregular square plan, one of the most important monuments of the Catalan Renaissance; today it forms part of the Olot School of Art. It consists of four galleries on two levels: those on the ground floor, of stone and covered with groin vaults, are formed by round arches on Tuscan columns with Doric capitals, topped by a frieze of metopes and triglyphs running around the courtyard; on the upper floor, only the west gallery is of stone, the work of master Llàtzer Cisterna, with plain columns bearing Ionic capitals. The convent was founded in 1565 by Carmelites from Girona, and its church, begun between 1569 and 1572 in Gothic style, was later restored in the Baroque period.
Monument
Modernist building in Olot (Garrotxa, Girona), located at Passeig d'en Blai, 38-40. The Solà family settled in Olot in 1781 and built the original building on the Passeig del Firal during the urban development of 1812-1814; between 1912 and 1916 the architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner renovated the façade, giving it its current Modernista appearance, with neoclassical elements. The façade is organized into three tiers: on the ground floor there is an entrance door with a segmental arch on each side, decorated with two female sculptures by Eusebi Arnau; on the central section, balconies and a gallery with Modernista plant-motif ornamentation, all covered with sgraffito reproducing 18th-century rococo designs; the ensemble is topped by an upper gallery with a large decorated eave.
Monument
Built between 1779 and 1784 to a design by the architect Ventura Rodríguez, thanks to the bequest of Antoni Llopis and contributions from Bishop Tomàs de Lorenzana, as a school, teachers' housing, a charitable institution, and a school of Fine Arts that gave rise to the Olot landscape school, first directed by the painter and architect Joan Carles Panyó. It served as barracks during the Guerra Gran (1793-95) and again in 1874. It is a large three-storey block with two interior courtyards and the chapel between them; the rear courtyard, neoclassical, features round arcades on all four sides. Today it houses the Museu de la Garrotxa, the Observatori del Paisatge de Catalunya, and the city's giants, which only leave the building for the Festes del Tura and for Corpus Christi. Declared a Bien Cultural de Interés Nacional (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in 2020.
Monument
Theatre located on the Firal of Olot, with documented references since the 17th century, which has undergone numerous renovations throughout its history: it was rebuilt and enlarged in 1842, burned in 1874 by the Carlist general Savalls and his bands during the Carlist Wars, and reconstructed by the Town Council until its reopening in 1887 to a design by Martí Sureda i Deulofeu; the current façade, however, dates from a 1902 renovation. Today it is a public facility with a broad programme for all audiences. In December 2020 it was declared a Bien Cultural de Interés Nacional (Spain's highest level of heritage protection), in the category of historic monument.
Monument
The three circular towers of the Turó de Sant Francesc, built of volcanic stone on the volcanoes of Montsacopa, Bisaroques and Montolivet, were constructed during the First Carlist War, in the 19th century, with a ground floor and upper floor with numerous loopholes, within the Natural Park of the Volcanic Zone of the Garrotxa. They replaced other defensive towers that the French had built on the same site during the Peninsular War, in 1808, and which were destroyed upon their withdrawal; Olot then experienced, during the first third of the 19th century, invasions, the burning of convents, and sieges. Today in ruins, the three towers are a Bien Cultural de Interés Nacional (Spain's highest level of heritage protection; BCIN 1138-MH).
Monument
The church of Sant Esteve, parish basilica of Olot (Garrotxa), is a Bien Cultural de Interés Nacional (Spain's highest level of heritage protection). It has a Latin-cross plan with a single nave 58 metres long and 37.4 metres wide, and both the interior and exterior follow neoclassical conventions. The façade was built in 1800, and in 1886 embellishment works began; it was planned with three sections, the front and two bell towers, but the work was left unfinished. On the doorway of the south façade the coat of arms of Olot appears amid foliage. Three statues on the façade were destroyed in 1936, at the start of the Civil War, and replaced between 2024 and 2025 with new sculptures of Sant Esteve, Sant Valentí and Santa Sabina, co-patrons of the city. It preserves the altarpiece of the Baixada de la Creu, by Josep Berga i Boix.
Nature
The finest example of volcanic landscape on the Iberian Peninsula, located in the eastern Pyrenees, in the comarca of the Garrotxa. Volcanic activity began about 350,000 years ago and died out about 8,300 years ago; the park records some forty volcanic cones, 10 well-preserved craters and more than 20 basaltic lava flows. It covers an area of 15,309 hectares spread across 11 municipalities and 28 nature reserves, under a protection regime created to curb the impact of mineral extraction, urban growth and uncontrolled rubbish dumps. The terrain, the relief and a very humid, almost Atlantic climate sustain a varied and often lush vegetation of holm oak, oak and beech woods.
Nature
Montsacopa, so called for its “cup” shape, is the last volcano to have erupted on the Olot plain, about 100,000 years ago, and is today completely surrounded by the city, between the districts of Sant Francesc, el Morrot and el Pla de Baix; it forms part of the nature reserve of the natural park of the volcanic zone of the Garrotxa. In its crater, which preserves three hermitages, the most notable is that of Sant Francesc d'Assís, from the 17th century, which gives the volcano its alternative name; during the French occupation of 1812 it was walled and two defence towers were raised beside it, still standing today. The Way of the Cross path, laid out in the 19th century from Olot's cemetery, skirts the crater in a circular walk offering a 360-degree panoramic viewpoint over the city and its comarca.
Nature
A singular beech wood in the Garrotxa, near Olot, growing on a cooled lava flow from the Croscat volcano, at an altitude of 550-650 metres, unusually high for this type of woodland in Mediterranean Spain. It covers about 4.8 km² and its ground shows volcanic hummocks up to 20 metres high, known locally as tossols. It forms part of the Natural Park of the Volcanic Zone of the Garrotxa. The poet Joan Maragall dedicated a famous poem to it, commemorated by a monolith beside the Can Serra car park, on the road from Olot to Santa Pau. Motor vehicles are banned within the wood, but there are walking trails and it can also be toured on horseback or by traditional carriage.
Nature
The Garrinada volcano, next to the town centre of Olot, reaches 536 metres in altitude and was formed about 133,000 years ago, during the late Pleistocene. Its crater, of phreatomagmatic origin, today has a recreational area and a path running around its perimeter.
Activity
A fair devoted to honey, held in Olot, capital of la Garrotxa.
Monument
Church of Santa Maria de Batet, on the Puig de Batet, municipality of Olot (la Garrotxa, Girona), in the Garrotxa Volcanic Zone Natural Park. The place is mentioned in the founding charter of the monastery of Sant Pere de Besalú, in 977, when it was a villa dependent on the counts of Besalú. The current building, Romanesque and Neoclassical, dates from the 12th century with alterations from the 15th to the 19th centuries; it preserves a semicircular apse with columns and a central window, and a three-storey bell tower with a four-pitched roof, from the 18th century with Romanesque traces. Inside there are Gothic chapels dedicated to the Virgin of the Rosary and to Saint Peter, with ribbed vaults with carved bosses, and the west facade shows a Neoclassical portal from the mid-19th century. Protected as a cultural property of local interest.
Monument
Castell Coll is a building in Olot listed as a bien cultural de interés nacional (Catalonia's highest level of heritage protection). More than a great castle, it was the manorial residence of the lords of Coll: a fortified manor house, a Gothic building with an annexed tower, today converted into a farmhouse, with a rectangular plan and well-cut ashlar. The perimeter walls, the oldest part of the complex, date from around the 13th century, while the interior arches are from the 14th-15th centuries and the rest from the 17th-18th centuries. In the early 19th century it was very run-down, but the ground floor was fitted out for livestock and the upper floor for farmhands. Tradition spoke of underground passages for fleeing in case of attack; a few years ago those passages were discovered, leading from the castle to the tower house of the Vall de Bianya. It is located towards the northwestern end of the Olot municipal area, on the Sant Miquel del Mont ridge, with fine views over the Olot plain.
Monument
Rectangular defence tower raised on the summit of the Bisaroques volcano, in Olot (Garrotxa), built of volcanic stone with the entrance on the ground floor and loopholes on the two upper floors. It was built during the first third of the 19th century, when the Peninsular War of 1808 and the first Carlist War of 1833 led to the fortification of the main hills surrounding the town; today it survives in ruins, like its twin towers on the Montolivet and Montsacopa volcanoes. It is listed as a bien cultural de interés nacional (Catalonia's highest level of heritage protection).
Monument
Farmhouse first called Mas Soler, the property in 1393 of Pere Soler; three hundred years later, on 24 June 1684, Joan Marcillo de Foixà sold it to Joan Ventós i Papagalls, whose surname it took from then on. The Ventós family came from the area of Sant Aniol de Finestres, where the first known Ventós is Guillem (1394); in 1581 a member of the family married the heiress of the Papagalls farmhouse in Santa Pau, and at the end of the 17th century the family moved permanently to the outskirts of Olot. The present building, square in plan with galleries on two façades, dates from 1849, has a ground floor, two upper floors and a dovecote loft, and preserves notable furniture from the 16th to the 19th centuries, also listed as a bien cultural de interés nacional (Catalonia's highest level of heritage protection).
Monument
The Torre Castanys is a residential tower of Italianate style built in 1844 in what is now Olot's Parc Nou, on an estate that had been the abbot's house and vegetable garden and which the manufacturer Miquel Castanys i Masoliver bought from the State; the design is by the architect Josep Fontserè i Domènech. Rectangular in plan and symmetrical in composition, surrounded by gardens of the same period, it has on its main façade a polygonal staircase leading up to a first-floor gallery with three round arches, matching those of the ground- and first-floor windows, and a central tower above the façade. Between 1991 and 2022 it housed the Museu dels Volcans. It is listed as a bien cultural de interés nacional (Catalonia's highest level of heritage protection).
Historical milestone
The Carta de franqueses of Olot is the charter that the abbot of Ripoll, Bernat de Peramola, signed on 18 August 1206, granting franchises and liberties to the peasants who settled beside the Fluvià river, around the church of Sant Esteve, in the Garrotxa region. The abbot sought to increase the population density of the area and to ease the administration of the domains the abbey of Ripoll held in the Garrotxa. The charter set in motion the urban growth of what until then had been a handful of houses scattered across the volcanic basin, the seed of present-day Olot.
Historical milestone
The town opened in 1783 a free drawing school intended for the apprentices of the printed cotton textile industry; from its classrooms would come, a century later, the Olot landscape school and the trade of the religious image makers.
Historical milestone
Alfonso XIII granted the town the status of city after a century of factory growth that had made it the most populous center of the Girona comarcas after Girona; in 1911 the railway would arrive.
Food and drink
The capital of the Garrotxa has lived off charcuterie ever since the pig farming of the basin fed its workshops: black and white butifarra, llonganissa and bull are the basis of the comarca's mountain cooking.
Food and drink
Porridge of buckwheat flour, a cereal that has continued to be grown only in the Garrotxa and the Pla de l'Estany; it is eaten with milk or with pork rinds, and since 2006 the district of Batet de la Serra has held a fair devoted to buckwheat.
Food and drink
A ring of enriched bread dough flavored with aniseed, made in the city's ovens since long ago; it is eaten at breakfast or as an afternoon snack dipped in sweet wine and is the sweet most identified with Olot.