Book Girona tours, attraction & transfer tickets

Few medieval cities in Europe wear their layers as visibly as Girona. The old town rises on the eastern bank of the Onyar river, its ochre and terracotta facades reflected in the water below, and behind those facades lie Roman walls, a Romanesque cathedral, and one of the best-preserved Jewish quarters anywhere on the continent. The Call, as the medieval Jewish neighbourhood is known, is a warren of narrow stone passages that climb steeply from the Carrer de la Força, and walking through it gives a sense of compressed history that few purpose-built attractions can replicate.

The cathedral itself demands attention. Its single Gothic nave is the widest in the world, a fact that still surprises visitors who approach it up the famous baroque staircase from the Plaça de la Catedral. The building took centuries to complete, which is why its western facade is baroque while the interior is overwhelmingly Gothic, and why the cloister, tucked to the north, belongs to an earlier Romanesque phase entirely. The Girona Museum of Art occupies the adjacent episcopal palace, and a skip-the-line ticket makes practical sense here given how much ground there is to cover in the old town on a single day.