Churches and monasteries

A church is a necessary element of any Spanish town and village, and the Costa Brava is no exception. Naturally, only a handful of hundreds of thousands of churches in Spain are classified as masterpieces, and these are usually found in larger cities. Looking for the next La Sagrada Família on the coast of Costa Brava doesn't make much sense, but you have a high chance of discovering some very old temples, mentioned in the archives dating back to the 9th-11th century!

Several Costa Brava churches and monasteries are classified as national heritage objects, the highest status an architectural monument in Catalonia may achieve. The vast majority of them were built between the 9th and the 13th century A.D. Many underwent extensive restorations and renovations, of course, but each maintains at least a part of its original construction. For architecture aficionados, this means that you may encounter at least three different architectural styles along the Costa Brava coast—Pre-Romanesque, Romanesque and Gothic.