Logbook · 4 places

What to see and do in la Canonja

What to see and do in la Canonja (Tarragonès, Tarragona): 4 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 1 Nature · 1 Historical milestones

How far each place is from the centre of la Canonja

Castle of Masricart 50 m
Archaeological site of el Barranc de la Boella 2.1 km

Towns near la Canonja

What to see in Vila-seca 3.3 km · 5 places
What to see in Constantí 4.6 km · 4 places
What to see in Tarragona 5.9 km · 22 places
What to see in Salou 6.1 km · 6 places
What to see in Reus 7.4 km · 16 places
What to see in la Pobla de Mafumet 7.8 km · 4 places
What to see in el Morell 8.4 km · 2 places
What to see in els Pallaresos 9.6 km · 3 places

Spain › Catalonia › Tarragona › Tarragonès › la Canonja

What to see and do in la Canonja

La Canonja
Village
La Canonja is a municipality in the comarca of the Tarragonès, in the province of Tarragona, with 6001 inhabitants (INE 2025), 6 km from the centre of Tarragona, on almost flat terrain. Excavations at the Barranc de la Boella, within its territory, have found large-format tools on schist, picks and cleavers, together with flint flakes, dated to between 0.876 and 1.07 million years ago: the oldest evidence of Acheulean technology in Europe. It was an independent municipality until 1964, when it was merged into Tarragona, and in 1982 it became a decentralised municipal entity. In 2008 the Generalitat and the Parliament voted against its independence for not being three thousand metres from another settlement, but on 15 April 2010, by unanimous vote, La Canonja regained its own town council.
Castle of Masricart
Monument
15th-16th-century manor house, much altered afterward, with a ground floor, an upper floor, and a solana gallery, and a voussoired round-arched portal; a Gothic-Renaissance complex, with the gallery added in the mid-18th century. It belonged to the Antolí family until 1228 and afterward to the Ricard family, from whom it takes its name, and later passed to the Llorenç family (1321), Castellví (1445), Ponç (1590), and the counts of Llar (1693). Restored and expanded in 2014, today it houses the public library and municipal facilities. A Bien Cultural de Interés Nacional (Catalonia's top heritage-protection category).
Archaeological site of el Barranc de la Boella
Nature
The Barranc de la Boella site is located north of La Canonja, six kilometres from the coast and fifty metres above sea level, and has provided evidence of the earliest inhabitants of the European continent: flint tools and faunal remains around a million years old, with the oldest evidence of Acheulean technology in Western Europe. Known since the early 20th century and first excavated in 1970 by Salvador Vilaseca, who found remains of proboscideans, rhinoceroses, horses and deer, it was the subject of new campaigns from 2007, after a flood exposed mammoth molars and tusks, which confirmed its importance with remains of mammoth, hippopotamus and carnivores together with flint and quartzite lithic industry.
Recovery of municipal independence of la Canonja
Historical milestone
Annexed to Tarragona in 1964 and turned into a decentralised municipal entity in 1982, the locality recovered its own town council by a law of the Catalan Parliament approved unanimously in April 2010, after decades of local demands.