Pyrenean Counties

From Empordà to Ribagorça, the route passes through beautiful landscapes in front of the Pyrenees mountain backdrop, which have been the cradle of historical figures and the setting of great heroic deeds, legends, myths, and traditions. A natural and human-shaped environment with scattered monasteries, churches, and castles, reminding of an era in which Europe, feudalism, the crusades, and Romanesque art also had their origins.

The route of the Pyrenean Counties spans from the little-known 9th century, when Wilfred the Hairy initiated the process that would lead to the independence of the Catalan societies, to the 15th century, when the death of Martin the Humane without living heirs led to the extinction of the House of Barcelona, which had ruled Catalonia for over five centuries.

The route runs through the Catalan Pyrenees, in the broadest sense, across the territory of the former counties from which Old Catalonia (Catalunya Vella) emerged. The route offers the opportunity to visit a carefully selected collection of medieval monuments and museums that take you into the historical setting of Old Catalonia and the "Marca Hispanica" and to the times of the feared warrior Tallaferro or the pious Countess Ermesinde. A journey into the formation period of the country.