Spain · Still standing
Montgrí Castle
Castillo del Montgrí
Montgrí Castle is a late 13th–early 14th century fortress on the summit of the Montgrí Massif near Torroella de Montgrí, Catalonia. Its built fabric consists of a roughly square 31 m enclosure with four round corner towers and 13 m high battlemented curtain walls; the interior was laid out around a paved central courtyard with a large cistern beneath.
First raised
1300
Its prime
1301
Today
Still standing
As it stood in 1301
What Montgrí Castle looked like in its prime.
A compact square fortress of pale limestone ashlar, 31 m on a side, with tall straight curtain walls rising about 13 m to a crenellated parapet. Each corner is anchored by a large cylindrical tower integrated into the wall line. The wall faces are plain, with regular narrow vertical openings and visible tooling on the stone. The castle sits on a rocky, low scrubbed limestone plateau; the interior is an open, stone-paved square with a large cistern beneath.
Its story
The story of Montgrí Castle.
Jaume II, Ponç V and the Works of 1294
The castle grew out of the rivalry between King Jaume II the Just and the counts of Empúries, who held most of the land around Torroella de Montgrí. In 1294 Bernat de Llabià, governor of Torroella, began building on the summit of the Montgrí massif as a point of control against a possible confrontation between the king and Ponç V, count of Empúries. The starting date is known from Jaume II's letter to his procurator, a man of Torroella, putting him in charge of the works. Building was funded from the royal revenues of Torroella and a tax on the oxen of Ullà and Albons, and three years later the same man was given custody of the castle.
The Halt of 1301 and the Absorption of Empúries into the Crown
Work was interrupted in 1301 and never resumed. The county of Barcelona had consolidated its power against the county of Empúries, and the decline of the Empurian comital house made finishing the castle unnecessary. Only the perimeter walls and the four round corner towers were ever raised; the four ranges of buildings planned around the paved central courtyard were never begun. The last notices of the castle date from 1413 and connect it with the Llevià family.
Montgrí and the castle of Bellcaire are reckoned witnesses to the monarchy's struggle against feudal power, which ended with the county of Empúries taken into the crown, after ruining the district and shifting the course of the Ter from the plain north of Montgrí to the plain south of it in the first half of the fourteenth century. That diversion formed the continental dunes of Torroella.
From the 1985 Clean-Up to Heritage Listing in 1988
By the twentieth century neglect had brought the building to a worrying state of decay. On 10 November 1985 a public working day was held to clean the castle and to press the official bodies into restoring it; the Generalitat, the provincial council and the town council commissioned a consolidation project and afterwards approved the budget to carry it out. The castle was declared a cultural asset of national interest on 8 November 1988.
Step inside
8 places to explore in 1301.
The record describes 8 distinct spots at Montgrí Castle, including 3 interiors: stone-paved central courtyard, underground rainwater cistern beneath the courtyard, interior face of the curtain wall. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
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Recreate Montgrí Castle with AI to explore it.
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