activities

The tour begins at the foot of the keep, the castle’s most iconic feature, known as the “Torre de la Minyona”, the “Girl’s Tower”, due to the legend associated with it. The origins of the castle, when, why and how it was built, are all explained here. With the help of the pack and the illustrations, pupils will easily grasp that Cardona was a borderland between the Christian and the Muslim worlds. They will then climb to the top of the tower, where their senses will come into play.

Using their eyes, pupils will be able to identify the basic elements of the landscape: homes, woodland, fields of crops, the salt mountain and the peaks of the Pyrenees. Inside the tower, they will be able to perceive the smells of the space, the silence and the coolness. As they sit there, they will hear the legend of the love of the Christian princess Adalés and the Muslim prince Abdallah, told in the form of a story.

Immediately after this, they will begin a tour of the castle’s courtyards, cloister and outdoor areas. One of the highpoints of the educational tour takes place inside the magnificent Collegiate Church of Sant Vicenç de Cardona (11th century), regarded as one of the most important examples of Romanesque art in Europe.

Pupils will have to complete a dossier that focuses on all the senses. They will have to identify whether the space is large or small, whether the church is lofty (it is exceptionally large) or low, if it is cold or hot inside, what the predominant colours are and the smells that fill the air, and they will be able to feel the stone and compare it with the wrought ironwork of the grilles and the alabaster and marble of the pantheons of nobles.

They will have to identify the sounds they can hear and appreciate silence as a basic element of a spiritual place, a place of worship. Incense will transport them back in time to the era when the nobles attended mass, said by the abbot at the altar. The educational pack contains an illustration of the church and they will have to identify three key spaces: the altar, the tribune and the nave. They will also get to know a number of the people who lived in the castle: a nobleman, a man of the Church, a knight, a peasant woman, two musicians and the king. The educational activity is complemented by exercises in the pack that pupils will be able to do when they are back in the classroom at school.

The tour is designed and adapted to match pupils’ curricular level.