Village
Vilademuls is a farming, scattered municipality of the Pla de l'Estany, on the border with the Alto Ampurdán, situated 25 km from Girona. Besides the capital settlement, it comprises about a dozen small villages -among them Galliners, Ollers, Orfes, Terradelles and Vilamarí-, several with Romanesque-style churches, which have given rise to the numerous medieval towers and fortified houses scattered across its territory. The Fluvià river marks its northern boundary, with Navata and Pontós, in a transition zone between the Empordà plain and the mountains of the Garrotxa; the altitude ranges between 50 m near the river and 268 m at the Bon Aire site, while the village itself stands at 120 m. In the mid-19th century its town council numbered barely sixty inhabitants; today it has 898 (INE 2025).
Monument
A castle documented since the mid-11th century, built by the count of Besalú to fortify the frontier with the count of Barcelona; it was the seat of the barony of Vilademuls. Only an entrance gate and fragments of the wall survive, since in 1560 part of its stones were used to extend the parish church.
Monument
Remains of the fortified enclosure of les Olives, in the municipality of Vilademuls, in the Pla de l'Estany. It is a fortification dated to between the 15th and 16th centuries, situated in the hamlet of Les Olives, a settlement annexed to the municipality of Vilademuls in 1846. It is listed as a Bien Cultural de Interés Nacional (Catalonia's highest level of heritage protection) (BCIN).
Monument
The house of the Pols of Vilademuls, a family that held military privilege from the 14th century as members of the Braç Militar del Principat de Girona; it occupies the site of the castle's old main tower, whose stones were used in the 16th century to extend the village church.
Monument
A tower on the Turó de Fellines that formed part of the Barcelona-la Jonquera optical telegraph line, numbered 206; it is also known as the 'torre dels carlins' for its possible use as a position during the 19th-century Carlist Wars. It retains all four walls standing but without a roof.
Monument
The Torre de Sant Marçal, with Gothic and Renaissance features, is a military structure of the 15th and 16th centuries situated north of the church of Sant Marçal de Quarantella, also called Can Quarantella. It forms a rectangular block with a gabled roof, a voussoired door and ogival windows on the upper floor, and a quadrangular tower at the northeast corner. Inside, a cupboard is preserved that was once a fireplace hood carved in flamboyant Gothic stone with the family's coat of arms and fleurs-de-lis. The des Call lineage settled there from the 14th century; Francesc des Call is documented as a soldier at Galliners between 1429 and 1432. With his heiress Cecília des Call, married to Miquel de Raset, the tower passed to the Raset family of Cervià de Ter.
Monument
Manor tower situated next to Vilafreser, a small hamlet in the municipality of Vilademuls, on the Camí Ral that ran from France to Girona, with which the tower of Fellines kept visual contact; today its base is enclosed by the buildings of the farmhouse of which it forms part. Of quadrangular plan, 5 by 5.5 metres and 18 metres high, with walls 120 centimetres thick, arrow slits and remains of an old machicolation, it is dated to around the 13th century. From the second half of the 11th century, knights and clergymen bearing the name Vilafreser are documented, whose residence could be identified with this tower; in 1280 the bishop of Girona assigned Pere de Vilafreser part of the parish tithe, and the lineage died out in the 15th century. It is a Bien Cultural de Interés Nacional (Catalonia's highest level of heritage protection) (BCIN 4107-MH).
Monument
Parish church dedicated to Saint Stephen the martyr, documented since 1064, in the hamlet of Guialbes, municipality of Vilademuls, on the banks of the Siriana stream. It corresponds to the church of the former castle of Guialbes, built in the mid-11th century by Count Ramon Berenguer I, of which some remains survive; the church, Renaissance in appearance, was remodelled in the 16th century. Dependent on it were the sanctuary and former collegiate church of les Olives de Sant Esteve de Guialbes, erected in 1197 and turned into a centre of pilgrimage after its reconstruction in the 18th century; an alabaster Marian image from the 14th century is venerated there. Nearby also stands the hermitage of Sant Mer, from the 13th century and rebuilt in 1627, where, according to tradition, the legendary founder of the monastery of Sant Esteve de Banyoles once lived.
Monument
Romanesque church of the hamlet of la Quarantella, a cluster of farmhouses scattered among small valleys and hills, at the headwaters of the river Siriana, within the municipality of Vilademuls. The place name is documented as early as the 10th century, and the church, under the patronage of Sant Marçal, appears as a possession of the monastery of Sant Esteve de Banyoles in a bull of Pope Urban II from the year 1096. The present church, according to tradition, was built in 1224 and renovated in 1651; it was a small single-nave building with a semicircular apse, to which between the 17th and 19th centuries a chapel and an upper storey were added that nearly doubled its height. The doorway, on the south side, preserves a round arch with short voussoirs, and the apse, the best-preserved part, dates from the second half of the 12th century or already the 13th.
Monument
11th-century Romanesque church, built by Ramon Arnau, lord of Vilademuls, and his wife Eliarda within the castle precinct; in 1053 it was ceded to the bishop of Girona, Berenguer Guifré. Saint John the Baptist is venerated there, not on the feast of his birth but on that of his martyrdom, 29 August. The façade shows a Gothic-Renaissance doorway with capitals carved with human faces, above which rises a bell tower that was once a bell-gable and is today square in plan; the interior, with a single nave, barrel vault and semicircular apse, preserves a Gothic baptismal font and the tomb of Saurina de Cervelló, with the coats of arms of Vilademuls and Rocabertí. An inscription on the doorway records that the church was remodelled in 1560, already in the 16th century.
Monument
Church with Romanesque and Baroque features situated in the hamlet of Ollers, within the municipality of Vilademuls, in the Pla de l'Estany. Documented since 1049 according to Corominas i Marqués, in the 14th century it was known as ecclesia parroquiales sancti Martini de Olliariis and had two chaplains. The present façade, with a simple portal that preserves Romanesque ironwork and ceramic tiles depicting Saint Martin, was remodelled in the 18th century, with the date 1754 carved on the door; the bell tower, of square plan, ends in a pyramidal roof with battlements. Between the 13th and 18th centuries the parish tithes belonged to Dalmau de Rocabertí, Huguet d'Espasens and the marquis of Castell de Dos Rius. During the war of 1936 the images, jewellery and cult objects disappeared.
Monument
Sant Martí de Terradelles is the Romanesque parish church of the hamlet of Terradelles, in the municipality of Vilademuls (Pla de l'Estany), dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours and included in the Inventory of Architectural Heritage of Catalonia. It has a rectangular floor plan with a two-pitched tile roof and walls of irregular ashlar and rubble masonry, with well-cut ashlar at the corners and openings. Inside, with a single nave and side chapels, the entrance door is on a side façade, above which rises the bell tower, square in plan, with round-arched openings and a pyramidal roof, accessed from the outside. The church has been recorded since the 13th century, in 1279; in 1950 the main altarpiece was built using plaster panelling.
Monument
Church located at the old site of Juïgues, next to the farmhouse known today as Can Güell, in the municipality of Vilademuls, within the district of Vilamarí. The place name Juïgues is the only one in the area recalling a settlement of Jewish population: the “Judaiques” allod was acquired around 888 by Count Delà in order to move to Girona the twenty-five families who lived there. The property passed by inheritance until reaching, in 957, the monastery of Ripoll, which probably founded this chapel, a dependency of the parish church of Vilamarí. Abandoned since the 1960s and used as a storehouse, it was restored between 1998 and 2002. It is a very small building, with a single trapezoidal nave, a round-arched doorway and a bell-gable on the west façade.
Monument
A chapel of Romanesque origin, from the 13th century, located in the neighbourhood of Viella, in the village of Vilafreser, within the municipality of Vilademuls. It has a semicircular apse, of which only remains survive, and a nave covered with a slightly pointed vault; the façade preserves the double-arched portal, a round-arched window and the two-bayed bell-gable. Documented since 1276, next to it stood an old cemetery of which a gravestone survives. On one of the stones of the interior cornice a relief with two human faces was preserved, now removed. The last owner of the building, heir of the Baron of Quadras, ordered its demolition in 1991 and sold the most valuable stones; the rest of the structure remains covered by vegetation.
Monument
Santa Maria de les Olives is a church located in the hamlet of les Olives de Sant Esteve de Guialbes, in the municipality of Vilademuls (Pla de l'Estany, Girona), which combines Romanesque and Baroque elements. There is documentary evidence of an early church in the 12th century, transformed into a collegiate church in 1197; in the 15th century the main altar was dedicated to Saint Mary and another to Saint James the Greater. It was secularised in 1592, reintegrated into the see of Girona in 1606, and the building was rebuilt in the 18th century. From the original structure survive a holy water font and mural remains with a walled-up door on the north façade. Its 16th-century Gothic altarpiece, dedicated to Saint Ursula, was destroyed in 1936 and later reconstructed. It has been protected as a Bien Cultural de Interés Local (a local-level heritage protection category in Catalonia) since 2017.
Monument
Parish church in the small hamlet of Vilamarí, on a hill to the left of the Farga valley, in the municipality of Vilademuls. Documented since 1098, when two brothers of the Vilamarí lineage donated land to the canonry of Girona, it appears mentioned in tithe and fief records of the 13th and 14th centuries; in the 14th century it was served by three clergymen with a single altar dedicated to Saint Mary, to which another consecrated to Saint Michael was added in the 15th century. The current building is a 17th-century reconstruction, blessed in 1689, which reused walls of the earlier Romanesque church, visible on part of the west and south façades and on a good part of the bell tower. It has a nave with attached chapels and sacristy, a semicircular apse and a raised section with fortification elements.
Historical milestone
For much of the Restoration period (1876-1923), this small rural municipality gave its name to a constituency for the Congreso de los Diputados, a much-cited case of constituency manipulation from the caciquismo of the era.