Village
Santa Coloma de Farners is the capital of the Selva comarca, in the province of Girona, with a parish church documented since the year 898. Known for its mineral water springs and its setting amid the forests of the Guilleries range, it preserves the les Termes d'Orion spa, the castle of Farners and the nearby sanctuary of the Virgin of Farners, as well as the Romanesque monasteries of Sant Pere Cercada and Sant Salvi de Cladells. On its arcaded main square stands the Gothic church of Santa Coloma. The municipality, with 13,993 inhabitants (INE 2025), changed its official name from Farnés to Farners in the 1980s; its urban centre is home to more than 10,000 residents.
Monument
The castle of Farners is an 11th-century Romanesque building situated in the municipality of Santa Coloma de Farners, capital of the Selva, to which it gives its name. It is documented as early as 1046, in the oath of fealty sworn by Viscount Ramon Folc I de Cardona to Count Ramon Berenguer I; it was a fief of the viscounty of Cardona, under the castellany of the Farners family until the 13th century and later of the Vilademany family. In the Catalan civil war against John II it was occupied by the remences in 1485. Its last use dates from the 18th century, occupied by a Bourbon regiment during the War of the Spanish Succession. Restored since the 1990s, it occupies about 200 m², with a keep 8.4 m in diameter and 12 m high, next to the hermitage of the Mare de Déu de Farners. Bien Cultural de Interés Nacional (Catalonia's highest level of heritage protection) (BCIN 1396-MH).
Monument
The hermitage of the Mare de Déu de Farners stands at the foot of Farners castle, five kilometres from Santa Coloma de Farners, and blends Romanesque with the Baroque of its successive extensions. It was rebuilt by order of Ramon de Farners, who donated it to the diocese of Girona, and was consecrated on 23 April 1200 by bishop Arnau de Creixell; unlike most Romanesque churches, its nave faces north. In the 18th century an entrance nave, a transept with an elliptical dome and a large porch were added. In the camarín the 12th-century Romanesque carving of the Virgin of Farners is venerated; during the Civil War, two young men from Santa Coloma saved it from the desecration of the sanctuary, and in 1939 it returned to its camarín in a hugely attended pilgrimage.
Monument
Sant Andreu de Castanyet is the church of the Castanyet neighbourhood, in the municipality of Santa Coloma de Farners, already documented in the consecration deed of Santa Coloma's parish church of the year 950. Of Romanesque origin, much altered between the 13th and 17th centuries, it has a single nave some twenty metres long with two chapels on each side, a semicircular apse and a square bell tower with a pyramidal top; it preserves a bronze bell from 1940 and interior paintings from 1955 depicting scenes from the life of Saint Andrew. It is attached to the 18th-century rectory, next to which the old cemetery is preserved, closed off by a wrought-iron gate from 1827.
Monument
Sant Miquel de Cladells is a 12th-century Romanesque church in the Cladells neighbourhood, in the municipality of Santa Coloma de Farners, with a trapezoidal nave about ten metres long, a semicircular apse covered by a quarter-sphere vault, two side chapels -one with a granite baptismal font- and a square bell tower with a pyramidal top reached by a stone spiral staircase; the exterior of the apse displays a frieze with spheres and crosses. The place is mentioned in the consecration deed of Santa Coloma of the year 950 and is recorded as a parish in 1362. During the Peninsular War it was plundered and its main altars destroyed, replaced in 1828. The rectory, of a later period, served for years as an inn and is today used as a children's holiday camp.
Monument
Former Augustinian monastery about eleven kilometres southwest of Santa Coloma de Farners, with a church dated to 1063 and a community established in 1136, to which Pope Innocent III granted in 1198 the churches of Santa Coloma de Farners, l'Esparra, Sauleda and Vallcanera. The present church, rebuilt in the 12th-13th centuries and consecrated in 1245, is an outstanding example of late Romanesque, with a Latin-cross plan, a triple-apse east end, an octagonal dome and a doorway with receding arches bearing capitals and a tympanum; it was restored between 1987 and 1997. The monastery, in decline since 1480, came in 1592 under the Augustinians of la Seu d'Urgell and was suppressed in 1835; a fragment of its 14th-century altarpiece is kept in the Museu d'Art de Girona.
Monument
An 11th-century church next to Sant Pere Cercada, with a single nave about ten by three metres ending in a semicircular apse with Lombard arcading on the exterior, a barrel vault and a round-arched doorway, with a Gothic chapel with a ribbed vault added on the north side; bishop Guillem de Peratallada donated it to Sant Pere Cercada monastery in 1167, and Pope Innocent III confirmed the donation in 1198.
Activity
It is celebrated on the weekend closest to 24 September, the date of the death of the local saint Dalmau Moner, a Dominican friar from the convent of Girona, with sardanas, havaneras, concerts and children's shows featuring giants and big-heads.
Historical milestone
Pere the Ceremonious granted the place in 1344 the right to hold a market, the origin of its role as comarcal capital; until then it depended ecclesiastically on the collegiate church of Sant Pere Cercada and civilly on the castle of Farners.
Food and drink
Liqueur of green walnuts, spices and up to fifty herbs macerated in the sun and the night air; the town preserves the oldest known written recipe, from 1842, and devotes to it each November a festival of its makers.