Ripoll

Ripoll traces its origins to the founding of the Monastery of Santa María, built on the orders of Count Wilfred the Hairy, who is also credited with founding Catalonia itself, earning the town its Catalan nickname, "el bressol de Catalunya," the cradle of Catalonia. The monastery became a major cultural centre in the Middle Ages, producing manuscripts of European importance, including three Bibles now held in the Vatican. The town later developed as a metalworking hub, forges, nails, weapons, and iron casting, before shifting to textile production using the waters of the River Ter.

It also became a significant railway junction, and retains a notable railway heritage. In the early decades of the twentieth century, Ripoll was one of the strongholds of anarchism in Catalonia, with a powerful CNT trade union branch taking root there.

The Monastery of Santa María was founded in 888 at the request of Count Wilfred the Hairy. It is a significant example of local Romanesque architecture, though it has been extended and altered over the centuries. Much of the original complex is gone, the building visitors see today is largely the result of late nineteenth-century restoration work following earthquake damage in the aftermath of the Carlist Wars.

What survives is impressive: a twelfth-century portico carved with scenes from the Bible, and a cloister that is one of the rare surviving Romanesque double-storey cloisters in existence. The cloister courtyard, with its central fountain surrounded by trimmed shrubs, remains a genuinely quiet place. The Ethnographic Museum of Ripoll occupies the old manor house of Can Budallés, opened in March 2011.

Its collections trace life in the Pyrenees from prehistory to the present day, with strong holdings on farming tools, traditional trades, and a notable collection of historic Ripoll-made firearms and pistols. A large section of the town's medieval wall is also visible inside the building. The Scriptorium is a permanent interactive exhibition exploring the monastery's role between the ninth and fifteenth centuries as one of Europe's leading centres for the production and copying of manuscripts.

The Farga Palau is one of the last surviving examples of the Farga Catalana, the Catalan forge, an ironworking tradition that played a central role in Catalonia's early industrialisation during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Its main products were firearms, nails, and iron grilles. Ripoll also holds a railway heritage trail, the Ruta del Ferro, taking in a neo-Romanesque station, a turntable, workshops, a water tower, and a newer station building.