Miravet

Miravet's castle began as an Islamic fortress and was transformed by the Knights Templar into a castle-convent, making use of a commanding position on a meander of the Ebro. It is considered one of the best surviving examples of Templar military and religious architecture in the western world, and the most important Romanesque castle in Spain after Loarre. The style is a blend of Islamic, Byzantine and Cistercian Romanesque, with rooms designed for self-sufficiency: storehouses, a cellar, kitchen and church.

The castle suffered serious damage during the Carlist Wars and the Spanish Civil War but has since been restored. A ferry still crosses the Ebro here using only the river current and the ferryman's skill, the last original unpowered crossing on the entire Ebro. At the foot of the castle, the old quarter of Cap de la Vila preserves narrow arcaded streets, a Renaissance church built by the Order of the Hospital between 1565 and 1585 on the site of an earlier mosque, ruins from the 1938 Battle of the Ebro, and remains of a Moorish riverside boatyard.

The church now houses collections of local pottery, medieval painted tiles, and photographs of the Republican river crossing of July 1938. Miravet also has a living pottery tradition. Seven workshops in the old potters' quarter still produce classic local forms, pitxells, cantaros, cadufos, gerres and lebrillos, and several double as small private museums.