Santa Pau

Perched on a basalt cliff above two rivers in Girona province, Castellfollit de la Roca is a medieval village whose volcanic rock streets and Renaissance church tower over one of Cataluña's most dramatic natural platforms.

A Catalan village in Girona whose flower-draped wooden balconies along Carrer Teixeda have drawn painters and photographers for generations, and whose streets trace the line of the old royal road between Olot and Vic.

The historic capital of the Vall de Bas, El Mallol sits on a hilltop in Girona province where a medieval viscount's castle once governed the valley below.

A former independent county capital in Girona, its medieval bridges, Jewish baths, Romanesque monastery, and Gothic palace forming one of Catalonia's most coherent surviving medieval ensembles.

A medieval stone village in Barcelona's inland hills, its Romanesque churches, cobbled streets, and houses of noble origin rooted in nearly eleven centuries of continuous settlement.

Capital of the Pla de l'Estany comarca in Girona province, Banyoles sits on the shore of the second-largest natural lake in the Iberian Peninsula, a body of water so suited to rowing that it hosted the 1992 Olympic Games and the 2004 World Rowing Championships.

A compact stone village above the Catalan countryside, declared a site of cultural interest by the Generalitat, its medieval tower still standing watch over forty centuries-old houses.