Village
Lloret de Mar is a coastal municipality of the Selva comarca, in the province of Girona, on the Costa Brava beside the Mediterranean. It has 43,000 inhabitants (INE 2025) and seven beaches along its seven kilometres of coastline, one of Catalonia's great tourist destinations. The first settlers were the Iberian Indigetes, of whom sites such as Puig de Castellet remain. The place name is documented in 966 as Lauredo, from the Latin laurel. The present-day centre formed in the 15th century around the beach, after suffering Saracen raids; before that it lay inland, next to the hermitage of Les Alegries. From the 18th century trade brought the houses of the indianos. It preserves an old town, beaches and the Santa Clotilde gardens.
Monument
The castle of Sant Joan, declared a Bien Cultural de Interés Nacional (Catalonia's highest level of heritage protection), crowns the headland known as the Turó des Castell, with a drop of sixty metres above the sea, on the cliff that separates the beaches of Lloret and Fenals. From its position the castle of Sant Joan de Blanes can be seen, with which it formed a single line of coastal fortifications. It can be reached on foot along a path that starts from the passeig Manuel i Bernat and runs at sea level to the castle itself, or by car from the plaça de la Riera, taking the streets Francesc Campedrà and Marià Fortuny.
Monument
Noucentista gardens of some 15 hectares on the cliffs of Lloret de Mar, considered the best Mediterranean botanical garden in Europe, inspired by Italian Renaissance gardens, with views over the sea. They were commissioned by Raúl Roviralta Astoul, later marquis of Roviralta, who bought the land in 1918 and dedicated it to his first wife, Clotilde Rocamora, giving the garden its name. The design was the work of the architect and landscaper Nicolau Maria Rubió i Tudurí, who laid it out in 1919 following noucentisme, a Catalan movement that sought to recover order, symmetry and classical forms. The garden places great importance on species that enhance the views over the cliff and the Mediterranean, even though most of them do not flower.
Nature
The cala Sa Boadella is a beach with a nudist tradition situated on the southern Costa Brava, in the municipality of Lloret de Mar, between the beaches of Santa Cristina and Fenals. It is about 250 metres long, with coarse sand and a 10% slope, and has showers, a restaurant and a lifeguard service. The rock of Sa Roca des Mig divides it into two stretches, Sa Cova and Sa Boadella, although today the whole is simply known as Sa Boadella; nudism is practised mainly in the part furthest from the Jardins de Santa Clotilde, which rise above the cliffs. Surrounded by pine woods, it has been awarded the Blue Flag, and dogs are not allowed.
Activity
The Festa Major of Lloret de Mar, with popular and musical events over several days in July.
Curiosity
Fortified Iberian settlement on the promontory of Puig de Castellet, 2 km from Lloret de Mar (la Selva), on the Turó de Rossell, where the hill served as a natural defence and possible watchtower. It dates from the 3rd century BC and was active for less than fifty years, between 250 and 200 BC, by which time it was already abandoned. It preserves a pentagonal precinct, adapted to the terrain, of about 650 square metres, with eleven rectangular spaces around the perimeter; the central area, free of buildings, served as a passageway and for wells, rubbish pits and an oven, with the entrance to the east. It has yielded handmade and wheel-turned Iberian pottery — partly imported from Athens and Magna Graecia — together with pieces from Greece, Italy and Carthage, and stone tools for polishing, grinding or used as loom weights.
Monument
Can Grassot is a square-plan tower, with a ground floor and two upper floors, built in the 15th-16th centuries, on carrer Josep Maria Coll i Rodes in Lloret de Mar, declared bien cultural de interés nacional (the highest level of heritage protection in Catalonia). The rendered ground floor preserves a stone doorway and a ceramic inscription: "old defence tower of the village"; the unrendered upper floors show stones and pebbles bonded with lime mortar, with a rectangular window on the first floor and a Gothic ogee-arched one on the second, beneath a relief of a winged cherub. The flat roof, of solid brick, was rebuilt in the 19th or early 20th century. Originally it was a free-standing and taller building, a coastal watchtower against piracy; today, converted into a dwelling and absorbed into the urban centre, it retains a recognisable original appearance.
Historical milestone
Charles III's free trade decree, of 1778, launched the village's transoceanic navigation, which came to launch some one hundred and thirty brigs and polacres; the emigrants who returned rich from Cuba financed its urban transformation.