Camp de Tarragona | Page 2 | Cultural Heritage. Goverment of Catalonia.

Camp de Tarragona

Art and history go hand in hand in Baix Camp

On the coast of Cambrils, a quintessential seaside town, you’ll find all the most important natural and heritage treasures. On the seafront, the Cambrils Red Lighthouse is a must-visit. It provides a wide perspective of the port of the municipality, allowing you to watch the fisherfolk carrying out their daily work and also take in some breathtaking sunsets. What’s more, you can visit it whenever you want as it’s open 24 hours a day, every day of the year. Also located right in the centre of the port and standing out due to its imposing structure, we find the Torre del Port, also known as the Torre de los Moros. This defensive building dating from the 17th century served to prevent the pirate attacks suffered by the town. As one of the seats of the Museum of History of Cambrils, it currently holds different temporary exhibitions.
 
If you want to really get to know the municipality, another must-see seat of the Museum is the Molí de les Tres Eres, an old hydraulic flour mill. Dating from the 14th century, here, we can find the permanent exhibition “Cambrils: los orígenes” (Cambrils: the origins), a journey from prehistory to the late Roman period of the municipality told through household utensils, ritual objects and ornamental elements, especially the bronze ones found in the Roman villa of la Llosa. This site, discovered in 1980, is open to the public and presents the remains of a villa in the immediate vicinity of Tarraco, which was inhabited between the 1st century B.C. and the 6th century A.D.
 
Also in Cambrils, we find the Samà Park, a majestic historic garden that is part of the European cultural itineraries. This natural space, an Indiano legacy of the marquis of Marianao, evokes the exuberance of the former colonies and is one of the best examples of Romanticism gardening.
 
As well as all this history, Baix Camp also has an outstanding artistic imprint. For this reason, it’s well worth following the footsteps of Joan Miró at Mas Miró in Mont-roig del Camp, a town with different backdrops that have appeared in the artist’s works. Here, you can follow the self-guided tour El paisaje emocional de Miró (The emotional landscape of Miró), which, thanks to different signposted points, allows you to discover the municipality that welcomed the painter and served as a source of inspiration for his creations.
 
A proposal brought to you in collaboration with Descobrir magazine.
 
 
English translation unavailable for La taula parada: Un Sant Joan amb Eduard Toda.

A walk through the Tarragona marina

We begin our getaway in Serrallo, Tarragona’s marine neighbourhood, a reference point due to its gastronomic offer and prime location. Here, parents, children and grandchildren of fishermen alike have followed in the traditional professional footsteps of their ancestors to preserve the marine soul of the streets of Serrallo.
 
Tarragona enjoys a strategic location in the Mediterranean that favoured the arrival of the Romans and its development as the capital of Hispania Citerior. More than 2,000 years ago, the Romans built the first man-made port buildings. Since then, the Tarragona coast has been, with varying degrees of success, an entry and exit route for products, ideas and people. This port tradition is evident in the Serrallo Muelle de Costa, former premises of the Port of Tarragona converted into a space for civic and cultural use in 1986. There, we find the recently renovated Port Museum, which offers detailed explanations of its history, from the times of the Roman Tarraco to the current day. It also showcases life on the docks, different types of fishing, sports activities, boats and merchandise linked to the Mediterranean.
 
Still in the Muelle de Costa, we find Tinglado 4, which was a maritime passenger terminal in the nineties and now houses the “TARRACO/MNAT” exhibition, where we can learn about the history of Tarraco through archaeology and the most emblematic pieces from the MNAT collection.
 
We simply can’t leave the port without taking a stroll to the spectacular Banya lighthouse, a unique testimony of the metal lighthouses that were built at the mouth of the Ebre. It was located at the Punta de la Banya and in the past was a shelter for boats during storms and a place for exchanging goods and supplies in the Ràpita area.
 
Roman Tarragona is also well worth a visit, with impressive monuments preserved from those times. We can take in the Necropolis of Tarraco, one of the best-known and best-preserved late Roman cemeteries of the Roman Empire, or the Theatre of Tarraco, a Augustan-age construction that still preserves part of the stands and the stage. But also the spectacular Amphitheatre, where gladiator fights and wild animal hunts took place, and the archaeological walk along the Roman wall.

An excursion proposed in collaboration with the magazine Descobrir.
English translation unavailable for La taula parada. El gust per la Història: Castell Monestir d'Escornalbou.

Guided tour at the castle-monastery of Escornalbou

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English translation unavailable for Divendres DiVins a la Cartoixa d'Escaladei.
English translation unavailable for La relíquia del monestir​.

Domènech i Montaner, without leaving Reus

2023 marks the centenary of the death of the Modernista architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner. A stroll through Reus is like a celebration of his work because some of his most outstanding works, contemporaneous with those of other renowned Modernista architects such as Antoni Gaudí, are to be found here.
 
The Casa Navàs is in the Plaça del Mercadal which, lined with café terraces, is an ideal place to verify the fame of Reus' vermouth. The Casa Navàs is the only Modernista building in Europe to have kept its original interior, remarkable on account of its more than 200 square metres of stained glass windows, its work in stone and its embroidered tapestries, amongst other jewels. The Domènech i Montaner route continues on to the Casa Rull, built in 1900, just as Modernisme was expanding its influence. It stands on a corner making it easier to admire its doorways, Gothic-inspired windows and the crenellations that crown the facade.  Just a few metres away is the Casa Gasull, which was commissioned ten years later by the olive oil merchant, Pere Gasull. It differs from the Casa Rull insofar as it shows the influence of Noucentisme on Domènech i Montaner's architecture. He was also responsible for the interior design of the impressive library in the Casa Pau Font de Rubinat and for the refurbished facade of the Casa Llopis Borràs in Carrer Raval de Sant Pere in Reus.
 
The Pavelló dels Distingits ('Pavilion of the Distinguished') of the Institut Pere Mata, on the outskirts of Reus, is another of Domènech i Mon­taner's celebrated works. Its astonishing ornamentation makes it the building with the highest artistic value amongst the institution's architectural ensemble. For a journey back to the time it was built, Còdol Educació has programmed theatrical visits that also include the Modernista architecture and decoration of this building that was so exemplary for the treatment of 20th-century patients with mental illnesses. The route concludes at the municipal cemetery, which is also on the outskirts of Reus, for which Domènech i Mon­taner was commissioned for the design of the Margenat chapel, which has quadrangular floor plan and a ribbed vault. While the paving has highly varied decoration, the chapel walls are divided into two parts by a frieze depicting flowers and angels in relief. 
 

English translation unavailable for Els grans mausoleus dels cementiris de Tarragona i els seus voltants.

Jujol's Modernisme in Camp de Tarragona

BAIX PENEDÈS

We can start the excursion in Vendrell to visit the church of Sant Salvador whose Modernista altar and baldachin, of Baroque inspiration and supported by magnificent Solomonic columns, are by Jujol.
 

ALT CAMP

From Baix Penedès we go now to Alt Camp, where one of the jewels of Jujol's legacy awaits us, the sanctuary of La Mare de Déu de Montserrat, which crowns the Corralet de Montferri hill. Its interior structure is spectacular. It has one hundred and twenty catenary arches that create the shape of a ship pointed as if ready to sail to the mountains of Montserrat, Jujol's source of inspiration.

TARRAGONÈS

We continue the excursion in the Tarragonès district, stopping first in the centre of Vistabella, in La Secuita. The church of Sagrat Cor is one of Jujol's few newbuild constructions in the Camp de Tarragona, and he achieved it almost without resources. The land was given by a rich donor, the stones came from ploughing the earth and labour was voluntary. And the result? A building with a spire visible throughout the district.

In Els Pallaresos we visit the Casa Bofarull, which Jujol spent eighteen years restoring. Animals, flowers and colours abound in the decoration of the house in a festival of natural features that reflect its rural setting.

The Jujol Centre in Els Pallaresos is also well worth a visit. It is located in the former Town Council and school building, a building he designed himself between 1917 and 1920.

We finish our excursion in the city of Tarragona, at the Teatre Metropol, which was commissioned from Jujol as a young man, just as he was embarking on his career as an independent architect after having worked alongside Gaudí. It was a very daring, highly imaginative and well-executed project, inspired by the waves of the sea beating against the hull of a ship.

*An excursion proposed in collaboration with the magazine Descobrir.