Living with Medieval Catalan Architecture

After a day and a half in the city of Barcelona, we meet up with our group of twelve from Texas and shuttle to the medieval village of Ullastret, a two-hour drive northeast of Barcelona. While the Catalans are a part of the total Spanish identity, the area seems like a separate country in its culture, language, food and climate. An Ullastret castle (circa 1150) is our base for eight days. Our group has the medieval home to ourselves equipped with a chef named Ramurnes and Panchita, his toy dog, who sports a glittery pink bow forming a palm tree at the top of her head. Ullastret is the name of both a charming village and the fascinating archeological site, Puig de Sant Andreu, the largest Iberian settlement in Catalonia for which it is famous. The settlement, set on a lush hillside, was inhabited continuously from 7BC until its mysterious abandonment in the late 17th century. It has been carefully excavated to reveal Cyclopean (pre-Iberian) foundations and the remains of houses, cisterns and drains to carry rainwater from rooftops into stone tanks. The main square resembles those of certain Greek settlements. Here you can see the impact of the Greeks on Iberian culture.

The Catalan empire stretched from a vast portion of the southeastern part of Spain into Provence, most of the islands in the Mediterranean, the southern half of present-day Italy, into Greece and Turkey. The predecessors of the Catalans, the Iberians, were probably migrating tribes who arrived on the peninsula between 3000 and 2000 BC. Some historians now propose that the Iberians may have been descendants of the Neolithic and early Bronze Age people who earlier inhabited the coastal regions of Iberia. Their life was most certainly modified by the Greeks, and later, the Romans. What we can deduce about the Iberians is that they showed a preference for urban life and were a remarkably cultured and artistic people who liked to adorn their sculptures and vases with animals, flowers and natural objects, motifs we readily observe in the work of Dali and Gaudi. In the museum above the archeological site are pieces of pottery with human figures dancing or playing musical instruments or bearing arms, many with marked Hellenistic characteristics. There are numerous inscriptions on pottery, lead plates, stones and coins. The script is not Iberian, but taken from Greek or Phoenician lettering, yet to be deciphered.

A mile and a half from the archeological site is the current day village of Ullastret, where our castle is located. Ullastret is a medieval precinct surrounded by three distinct lines of defensive walls. In the NW corner tower of the main square is a dungeon. A medieval Romanesque-style church and monastery (circa 1100) at the top of the hill ring bells hourly during the day. In a short week, our group finds ourselves at home in this medieval castle. For more photos of this medieval village and castle, please click on this link, Stephen B. Chambers Architects.