Montblanc

From the north side of town, the walls look like a stone tidal wave frozen mid-crash. Seventeen hundred metres of crenellations, twelve towers and four gates wrap the hilltop so tightly that the modern world is reduced to rooftops poking above the battlements and the occasional hiss of an espresso machine drifting through the portals. This is Montblanc, population 5,000-plus, altitude 350 m, and the only place in Europe that still insists a dragon once terrorised its citizens long enough to justify a week-long party every April.

The Walls Have Ears – and a 13:30 Lunch Slot

Start at the Portal de Sant Jordi, the gate where the legend is meant to have happened. A bronze dragon skull is bolted to the arch, tongue lolling as if it died mid-roar. The daily guided wall-walk leaves from the tiny office just inside at 11 a.m.; guide Sònia carries a ring of keys the size of a ship’s anchor and unlocks staircases that spiral into the adarve. From the top you can see the tiled sea of the old quarter, the Conca de Barberà vineyards rolling south, and the snow-dusted Prades mountains that keep the village in shade until mid-morning from December to February. The tour lasts ninety minutes, costs €8, and finishes on the far side of the walls – handy, because the bakery opposite the Porta de Bover does a still-warm coca de recapte (aubergine and botifarra flatbread) that sells out before 13:00.

The stone is warm even in January, but the wind funnels through the merlons with enough force to whip a brochure from your hand and drop it two fields away. Grippy shoes are non-negotiable: after rain the basalt cobbles turn into a black-ice simulator.

A Gothic Skyline Held Together by Ambition

Step back inside and the streets shrink to shoulder width. The parish church of Santa María la Mayor dominates the skyline even though its builders ran out of money and left one tower stubby. The interior feels barn-like and honest: no gilded excess, just rib-vaulted shadow and the faint smell of candle wax. A plaque lists mediaeval guilds that paid for each chapel – bakers on the left, tanners on the right – so you can tithe by trade while you wander.

Two minutes east, the Romanesque doorway of Sant Miquel has been recycled so many times that the capitals show everything from Adam and Eve to what looks suspiciously like a rugby scrum. The caretaker unlocks it only when the bell in the adjacent square strikes the hour; loiter with an ice-cream from Xocolati and you’ll slip in with the locals who still use it as their parish church.

The old Jewish quarter – the Call – is signposted with modest brass tiles instead of souvenir banners. One plaque marks the site of the 14-century synagogue, now a private living room with a perfectly ordinary Labrador watching television behind the grille. The effect is oddly grounding: history as someone’s Tuesday night, not a diorama.

Wine that Sparkles without the Champagne Mark-up

Montblanc sits in the heart of the DO Conca de Barberà, a region that never quite managed the fame – or the prices – of neighbouring Priorat. The local grape is Trepat, a thin-skinned variety that tastes like strawberries rubbed with black pepper. Three cellars operate within the walls; the smallest, Celler Mas Foraster, opens on Friday mornings if you WhatsApp first. A fiver buys a tasting of rosé cava that would cost triple in Barcelona, served in the courtyard where the family keeps the tractor parked next to a Roman tombstone they found while replanting.

If you prefer your wine with a chair, La Parra Gastronomic Space does a three-glass flight matched to coca topped with escalivada and anchovy. The menu is in Catalan, but staff switch to Geordie-accented English the moment they hear “sorry, could you…?” – a legacy of the owner’s Newcastle season washing dishes.

April Dragons, July Fireworks and the Peril of Cheap Shoes

The last week of April is Setmana Medieval. The town doubles in population, accommodation triples in price, and every alley becomes a theatre set for the death and resurrection of the dragon. Blacksmiths forge sparks in the main square, falconers perch eagles on guttering, and the smell of grilled onion and butifarra settles over the walls like fog. British visitors in 2023 reported queueing forty minutes for the loo but still rated it “better than any Ren-fair at home”. Book a room before Christmas or stay in Reus, twenty minutes away by car, and accept that you’ll be walking the last mile because traffic is banned from 18:00.

Summer brings a different crowd: cyclists tracing the Ruta del Cister between three monasteries. They splash electrolyte drinks in the fountains and collapse under the plane trees of Plaça Major, where the evening passeig still follows the Spanish rhythm: out at 19:00, home for the news. In August the temperature can hit 38 °C; the stone radiates heat until midnight, so smart visitors nap, then reappear with ice-cream at 23:00 when the walls are flood-lit gold.

Winter is quieter, cheaper, and can be bleak. Mist pools in the valley, the Trepat vines look like charcoal sticks, and several restaurants close on Mondays without updating Google. On the plus side, you get the guide to yourself and the smell of wood smoke drifting from chimney pots is cinematic.

Getting There, Getting Fed, Getting Out

Drive: 75 minutes south-west of Barcelona on the AP-2, exit 9. Follow the brown sign, then park in the free gravel lot outside the walls – driving into the old quarter is both illegal and impossible without folding your mirrors.

Train: Regional line from Barcelona-Sants to Montblanc, 1 h 40, €12. The station is a 15-minute uphill walk; taxis exist but must be booked the day before.

Stay: Hotel Nou Moderno is a converted 19-century townhouse with decent plumbing and no elevator; doubles from €80 including breakfast coca. Outside festival weeks you can turn up and haggle.

Eat early (by Spanish standards) at Pont Vell if you need an English menu and reliable Wi-Fi; locals still regard 20:00 as lunch time. Venture to Cal Racó for suquet de peix served in a terracotta bowl that weighs as much as a house brick. Finish with garrapiñadas from the cloistered nun in Carrer de la Cort – she’ll lower your paper bag on a string in exchange for coins placed on a lazy Susan.

If you’ve only half a day, pair Montblanc with the Cistercian monastery of Poblet, eight kilometres down the road and a UNESCO site that lets you inside the royal tombs for €9. Do the monastery first: it closes at 15:30, whereas the walls of Montblanc stay open until the sun goes down and the last swallow has skimmed the ramparts.

Leave when the floodlights switch off at midnight. The car park is empty, the dragon skull grins into the dark, and the temperature has dropped just enough to make the stones exhale the day’s heat like a sleeping animal. It’s the moment when you realise the walls aren’t a backdrop; they’re the town’s circulation system, and for a few seconds you’re inside the heartbeat.