Archaeological sites

The ancient Greeks began actively expanding trade and seeking to ease overpopulation in their cities in the 8th century B.C., which meant colonizing the Mediterranean part of the Iberian peninsula. The land obviously hadn’t been empty when they arrived. Ancient records mentioning the Iberians, the people native to the territory, used the name as an umbrella term for tens of different tribes and peoples inhabiting the territories that today cover about the third of modern Spain.

The Iberians aren’t the sole ancestors of modern Spaniards. Even though the Iberian peninsula is called just that, the lands of the Iberians really only included Catalonia, Valencia, and Andalucia of today. As mentioned already, it was not one homogenous group: what the Iberians shared in culture, language and writing they got from the Greek and Phoenician peoples who colonized them.

The history of the Iberian civilization covers 4 distinct periods:

1. Pre-Iberian period (650-550 B.C.)
The time of change in the Iberians’ way of life; the Bronze Age giving way to the Iron Age. The human leaves the cave and moves into a clay hut.

2. Ancient Iberian period (550-450 B.C.)
The Iberians begin building houses from stone, with rectangular foundations, and surround their settlements with fortress walls. They learn ceramics and metallurgy from the Greeks and Phoenicians.

3. Middle Iberian period (450-200 B.C.)
The prime of the Iberian civilization with the improved quality of life, population growth, and larger cities being converted to unpenetrable fortresses. The period of active trade with the colonizers, manufacturing of weapons, advancement of the art of ceramics.

4. Late Iberian period (after 200 B.C.)
After conquering the Carthaginians in the Second Punic War (218-201 B.C.), the Romans had settled in the Iberian peninsula permanently. The Iberians lost control over their cities and gradually abandoned them, eventually blending into and disappearing among the colonizers old and new.

The lands of the Girona province during the Iberian epoch were inhabited by the Indigetes. The marks of their intelligent presence are scattered across the whole province, but the most important archeological finding is, without a doubt, El poblat ibèric d’Ullastret, the ruins of an ancient town close to the pueblo Ullastret, the biggest in Catalonia not only in terms of size but in the number of artifacts it contained.

The Iberian Ullastret encompasses two settlements on the hills of Puig de Sant Andreu and Illa d’en Reixac, and a necropolis on the hill Puig de Serra of the municipality Serra de Daró. That treasures were buried in Puig de Sant Andreu was already well-known back in the 19th century, but the first scientific journals to mention it did so only in 1931. The actual digging could only begin 16 years later, after the end of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. Later, in the 1960s, another settlement area was discovered on Illa d’en Reixa, some 400 meters northeast of Puig de Sant Andreu. In 1982, a necropolis was uncovered on Puig de Serra, a kilometre away from Puig de Sant Andreu.

The settlement of Puig de Sant Andreu is the only one currently open to the public. The digging area covers 23 hectares, a rectangle of 600 by 380 meters. The list of uncovered artifacts that have been dug up already is vast:
– 930 meters of the fortress wall ruins;
– 7 towers connecting the fortress walls;
– numerous homes, the location of which allows for the understanding of the town plan, and whose contents tell stories of the Indigetes’ everyday lives;
– 2 religious temples with columns;
– over 200 storage pits for grains;
– 3 cisterns for drinking water collection, similar to those discovered in the ruins of Empúries.

A museum was opened in 1961 to showcase all the discoveries from Puig de Sant Andreu atop the very same hill. The museum has three rooms: the first details the Iberian history, describing trade, currency, religion, and rituals; the second is dedicated to architecture and urbanism; the third illustrates the everyday lives of the Iberians, including agriculture, livestock breeding, hunting, fishing, metallurgy, ceramics and fabrics manufacturing. The museum also has examples of the Iberian writing.

Visitor information

Address: Puig de Sant Andreu, Ullastret
Phone: +34 972 179 058

Opening times:
01/06-30/09 and during Holy Week: Tuesday-Sunday 10:00 am to 8:00 pm
01/10-31/05: Tuesday-Sunday 10:00 am to 2:00 pm and 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm
December 24 and December 31: 10:00 am to 2:30 pm
Closed on December 25-26 and January 1 and 6.

The closest train station is Girona.

Local historians have known about the ancient Greek and Roman settlements around the Sant Martí village on the Mediterranean coast since the 15th century, but the archaeological digging has only begun here at the beginning of the 20th one. The works have been ongoing, interrupted only by the Civil War in the 1930s, with no end in sight. The part of the settlement that belonged to the Ancient Greeks has been more or less covered, while the newer and much bigger Roman one has barely been touched, with about one-fifth of the settlement studied so far.

An approximate timeline of events unfolding in the settlement since the 6th century B.C. has been put together as follows.

A peaceful party of the Phocaean Greeks landed here in 575 B.C. with plans to build a port to facilitate trade with the Phoenicians and the Indigetes (one of the Iberian peoples inhabiting Catalonia). The spot was chosen for its strategic location between the deltas of Rivers Ter and Fluvià. The port was named appropriately to reflect its commercial nature: Emporion (ἐμπόριον), from the Greek trading port.

Archives describe the settlement as an island fortress connected to the mainland by a narrow land strip. Today, one wouldn’t see anything remotely resembling an island — the changes in the landscape serve as a reminder of how long ago it was founded. However, in about 30 years after the settlement was first built, the question of expansion got put on the proverbial table: Emporion grew fast due to bustling trade but also because of the rising numbers of refugees fleeing the Persian-conquered Phocaea.

Following the expansion, the Old Town Palaiapolis (παλαιάπολις) got joined by the New Town, Neapolis (νεάπολις). The Neapolis is the old ruins we are able to visit today, while the Palaiapolis, never completely abandoned, is where the tiny village of Sant Martí d’Empúries stands today.

The 5th and 4th centuries B.C. were primetime of the Greek presence in Empúries, with the trade going great, the city growing and prospering. In the following hundred years, though, Emporion started getting outperformed by Carthage both economically and militarily. With the threat of war looming, the Greeks were forced to ask for the Roman help.

The first appearance of the Romans in Emporion dates back to 218 B.C., at the very beginning of the Second Punic War. In 195 B.C., a small Roman military camp sprung up next to the Greek colony, turning into a fully grown city in the matter of two centuries. The Romans, gradually assuming full power over Emporion by the mid-first century B.C., renamed the city Emporiae, but never threatened the Greek and the Indigetes local population that continued living there peacefully. However, the Roman population far outnumbered the native residents, and the latter got gradually absorbed into the Roman demographics by the first century A.D.

By the time the Romans established control over the Iberian Peninsula, Emporion had lost its influence — the trade and the population growth had shifted to Tarraco and Barcino (Tarragona and Barcelona of today), and people started to leave the city. The Neapolis was the first to be emptied, becoming a cemetery by the 4th century A.D., while the Roman part of the settlement remained inhabited until the Norman invasion of the 9th century. The Palaiapolis has survived through the centuries, adopting its modern name Empúries and even going through a Renaissance while serving as the capital of Ampurias County in the 9th-11th century.

The list of the structures that have been uncovered by archaeologists onsite includes:

The Neapolis
1. fortification walls
2. Asclepion, a group of three temples dedicated to the god of medicine Asclepius, that served as sacred places, but also as a hospital
3. a temple to Serapis, the god of abundance and fertility
4. agora, a market square also used for resident councils
5. stoa, a covered colonnade on the agora
6. a small marketplace around the water reservoir
7. classical Greek houses with peristyles and the later-period Roman houses with atriums
8. water filtration structures
9. a sewer system
10. a fish conservation factory
11. a metallurgy workshop
12. an early Christian basilica
13. a harbour mole 80 meters in length.

The Roman city
1. fortification walls
2. a Roman forum
3. a temple to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva
4. a temple to Augustus
5. a basilica and a curia for courts and political gatherings
6. an amphitheatre
7. palaestra, a wrestling school
8. domus, houses of the wealthy families
9. Thermae.

The most valuable and interesting objects found in the archaeological dig are showcased in the museum with rooms dedicated to both the Greek and the Roman cities. An excellently preserved statue of Asclepius is on show in a separate room — the statue you see in the Neapolis is its copy.

Visitor information

Address: Carrer Puig i Cadafalch, s/n | 17130 Empúries-l’Escala
Phone: +34 972 770 208

Opening hours:
01/06-30/09: daily from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm
01/10-15/11: daily from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm
16/11-15/02: from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm, except December 25, January 1 and Mondays
16/02-31/05: daily from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm
Holy Week: from 10:00 am to 7:00 pm
December 24, December 26 и December 31: from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm

Paid admission (5,50€) includes a visit to the ruins and the museum.

Arriving from Barcelona by car, follow the highway AP-7 towards L’Escala and then the signs for Ruïnes d’Empúries. By train, the closest railway station is Figueres.

Directions: Locate a small path that begins at the eastern side of the Castell beach.

Directions: In the urbanization of Mas Ambròs (Calonge), find the point (41.862736, 3.058804) where the paved road ends. From there, walk on foot or in a suitable off-road transport for 1200 m until you reach the estate Can Mont with the coordinates (41.861505, 3.050756)). Then, take the path that curves around the northern side of the house and turns west, following it for 200 m until the point (41.861671, 3.049607). Here, turn left and walk south for about 800 m.

The dolmen Can Mina dels Torrents is a chamber of an irregular shape, 2.1 m long and 1.6 meters wide, covered by a large boulder for a roof. An artificial mound and a hallway leading to the chamber, structures typical for this type of archaeological object, have not survived.

The dolmen is located in a pine forest close to Palafrugell, in the pueblo of Torrents not far from the Can Mina estates (hence the dolmen’s name).

Directions: From the parking lot, at the coordinates (41.737228, 2.778008) start walking up and to the left, then follow the signs.