Village
Coll de Nargó is a town in the comarca of the Alt Urgell, in the province of Lleida, on the right bank of the river Segre, next to the Oliana reservoir. It has about 585 inhabitants and includes the settlements of Gabarra, Les Masies, Montanisell, Sellent and Valldarques. Documented since 988, it belonged to the county of Urgell; in 1097 Count Ermengol V granted its castles and towns to the lord of Caboet. It preserves several Romanesque churches: the parish church, dedicated to San Clemente; that of San Climent, next to the cemetery; and at Montanisell, that of Sant Joan, with a façade of Lombard arcading. It lives from agriculture, cattle farming and forest resources, including saffron milk-cap mushrooms and truffles. It is also known for its dinosaur egg sites and the cave paintings of the Solà de l'Ànima.
Monument
A pre-Romanesque church situated next to the cemetery of Coll de Nargó, in the Alt Urgell, near the road to Isona. The current building, with a single barrel-vaulted nave, was raised in the late 11th or early 12th century on an earlier construction, of which the layout of the south side and the bell tower survive, of pre-Romanesque origin and no later than the 10th century, with horseshoe-arched windows on its faces. The apse displays blind arcading and the whole is completed by a doorway to the west and a second entrance to the south. Declared Monumento Nacional Histórico-Artístico (a former Spanish heritage-protection designation for historic-artistic monuments) in 1946 through the efforts of the architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch, it was restored in 1929. During the Civil War it served as a powder magazine for the Republican army and, despite nearby bombing, suffered no damage.
Monument
Remains of a fortress, documented since the year 966, on a hill south of Montanissell overlooking the vall de les Culles and the Fontanet river; part of a tower survives. The castle's church, today Gothic, was built over an earlier Romanesque or pre-Romanesque one. A Bien Cultural de Interés Nacional (Catalonia's top heritage-protection category).
Monument
The most important element preserved is a circular tower about 12 metres high and 630 cm in exterior diameter, with walls up to 210 cm thick at ground level. The castle, documented since 1023, was a domain of the bishop of Urgell and stands on a crag at 931 metres above sea level, in the vall de Valldarques, a hollow on the northern slope of the sierra d'Aubenç characterised by the double gorge formed by the river on both sides. The small settlement that took its name, today with barely 17 inhabitants and very scattered, also retains next to the tower the church of Sant Romà. Bien Cultural de Interés Nacional (Catalonia's highest level of heritage protection).
Monument
The old core of Coll de Nargó, raised on rock, was a walled village in which the houses themselves formed the wall; remains of the wall survive along with the springing of an arch from one of the gates that closed off the medieval town.
Curiosity
The Solà de l'Ànima is a group of three rock shelters, catalogued as Solà de l'Ànima I, II and III, located between the headwaters of the Grases and Vilarenc ravines, in the municipality of Coll de Nargó, in the Alt Urgell comarca. They preserve schematic cave paintings datable to the Bronze Age, between 1800 and 650 BC. The group is listed as a bien cultural de interés nacional (Catalonia's highest level of heritage protection) in the comarca's catalogue of heritage assets.
Curiosity
One of the most important dinosaur egg sites in Europe, with fossilised nests in the municipality of Coll de Nargó (Alt Urgell, Lleida). The scientific community considers it one of the three most significant sites of its kind in the world. The remains, found by local geologists Josep Peralba and Joan Escuer, correspond to the Cretaceous–Tertiary boundary, some 65 million years ago; research began in 1985 and in the late 1990s the ADAU association was founded for its protection. The site can be visited at the Mirador del Cretaci, where footprints and plant remains from that period can be seen.
Activity
The fiesta mayor of Coll de Nargó is celebrated in a town known for its dinosaur egg sites, among the most important in Europe, and for the museu dels Raiers, housed since 1998 in the chapel of the Roser and dedicated to the trade of floating timber down the Segre, until the last log raft in 1932.
Monument
Housed since 1998 in the chapel of the Roser de Coll de Nargó, in the Alt Urgell -whose virgin is the patron saint of the raiers-, this museum explains the trade of floating logs down the river Segre in an age without trucks and without dams to regulate the flow, when the logs themselves, bound together into rafts, served as the vessel in hard and dangerous work. It gathers tools and images from this trade, which together with that of Pont de Claverol, in the Pallars Jussà, was one of the two most important centres of raiers in Catalonia. The last raft came down the Segre from Nargó in 1932, and since then every summer it is commemorated with a raft descent, usually on the second Saturday of August since 2008. It forms part of the Ruta dels oficis d'ahir of the Alt Urgell County Council.
Activity
Autumn fair devoted to the rovelló, the most sought-after mushroom in the pine woods of the Lleida Pre-Pyrenees. It brings together sales of the product, a mycological display and seasonal menus in the town's restaurants, at the height of the gathering season.