Manresa

Human settlement around Manresa goes back some four thousand years, with Neolithic burial pits, ceramics and stone tools found in the Marcetes forest area of the rural district of Viladordis. An Iberian settlement stood on the Puig Cardener hill, and recovered ceramics suggest it may have been the capital of the Lacetani people who inhabited the regions now known as Bages, Solsonès, Noya and Segarra. The Greek geographer Claudius Ptolemy mentions a city called Bacasis on a riverbank near a low rocky hill — plausibly Manresa — and the name is thought to be the root of the comarca name Bages.

The Romans are believed to have called the settlement Minorisa, though no Roman documents confirm this. Arab presence was brief; they abandoned the town in 785, and Christians occupied it in 796, bringing it into the Marca Hispànica. The following centuries brought repeated destruction — in 827 during the revolt of Aysun, again in 841 or 842, and once more around the year 1000.

The definitive Christian reconquest came at the hands of Wilfred the Hairy in the late ninth century. The town's name appears for the first time in a written document on 24 June 889 — a royal grant signed by King Odo I of France in Orléans, known as the Privilege of Odo.

Manresa is served by two rail systems. FGC line R5/R50 from Barcelona stops at three stations: Manresa-Viladordis (with urban bus line 8), Manresa Alta (where the bus station sits, with connections to wider destinations), and Manresa-Baixador, closest to the city centre. RENFE Cercanías line C4 from Barcelona Sants has a single Manresa station in the south of the city, with a bus stop for line 8 and a taxi stand.

By road, take the C16 from Barcelona or the C25 (Eix Transversal) from Lleida or Girona. From Barcelona-El Prat Airport, take the C2 train to Sants then transfer to line C4; a direct taxi costs around €100. From Girona-Costa Brava Airport, the Eix Bus Lleida–Girona line runs to Manresa twice daily at 08:45 and 17:45.