Girona: The City Everyone Skips (And Why You Shouldn't)

Here is something that happens repeatedly: people spend four or five days in Barcelona, tell you they want to see “the real Catalonia,” and have not considered Girona. This is a failure of imagination and, probably, of planning — Girona is an hour from Barcelona by train, costs almost nothing to get to, and contains things that have no equivalent in the capital.

It has medieval city walls you can walk on top of. It has the best-preserved medieval Jewish quarter in all of Spain. It has a cathedral with the widest Gothic nave in the world. It has a river with coloured houses. And it has none of the crowds that make Barcelona increasingly difficult to enjoy.

Getting There

The fast AVE train from Barcelona Sants to Girona takes 38 minutes. Regional trains take about an hour and fifteen minutes. Trains run frequently throughout the day. A return ticket costs approximately €15–30 depending on timing and booking date.

From the train station, the old city (call it the Barri Vell, or Old Quarter) is about a 15-minute walk across the modern city. There is no complicated navigation required.

The Cathedral

The Cathedral of Girona is one of the more surprising buildings in Catalonia, which is saying something given the competition. Construction began in the 11th century and continued for several hundred years, which is why the façade is Baroque while the interior is Gothic.

The nave is the thing. It’s the widest Gothic nave in the world — 23 metres across — and the effect when you walk in is one of those architectural moments that stops conversation. The decision to build it this way was controversial even at the time: a vote was held in 1416 on whether to continue with a three-nave plan or switch to a single nave, and the single nave won. That decision created something genuinely unusual.

The cathedral treasury contains the Tapís de la Creació (Tapestry of Creation), an 11th-century Romanesque embroidery that is one of the oldest and best-preserved medieval textiles in existence. It depicts the creation story, the months of the year, and various other scenes in remarkable condition. It’s in a climate-controlled room in the museum section, which has a separate entry fee — worth paying.

Entry to the cathedral nave: approximately €7. Entry with treasury: approximately €12.

The Jewish Quarter (El Call)

Girona’s Jewish community existed continuously from the 9th century until the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492. During that period, the Call — the Jewish quarter — was one of the most significant centres of Jewish scholarship in the Mediterranean world. The Cabalist Isaac the Blind lived and taught here. The community produced scholars whose influence spread across Europe.

The quarter itself is a maze of narrow lanes that have been remarkably preserved. Most cities either demolished these areas or absorbed them into later development. Girona’s Call survived essentially intact, and the Museum of Jewish History (Museu d’Història dels Jueus) occupies several spaces within it, including what was likely the main synagogue.

The museum is genuinely excellent — well-curated, with artefacts and documentation that put the community in real historical context. The building itself is worth seeing separately from the exhibits: the structure reveals how a Jewish home in medieval Catalonia was designed and organised.

The City Walls

Girona’s city walls were built by the Romans, extended in the Middle Ages, and further modified over the centuries. The surviving sections form a walk along the edge of the old city that offers views over the cathedral, the Onyar river, and the surrounding landscape.

The walls are free to access. The walk takes about an hour at a relaxed pace. There’s a section that requires some climbing (stone steps, no lift access), but most of it is accessible to anyone reasonably mobile.

The views over the city rooftops are the best photographs you’ll get of Girona. The coloured houses along the Onyar — pink, ochre, green — look like something from a travel poster, and from the walls you’re looking at them from the right angle.

The Houses of the Onyar

The houses built along the Onyar river are Girona’s most photographed image. They date from various periods and were rebuilt after floods over the centuries, which is why the current versions are relatively recent in their current form, though the location has been built up since the medieval period.

The iron bridges crossing the river include one designed by Gustave Eiffel in 1877 — the Pont de les Peixateries Velles. He designed it before the Eiffel Tower, during his period of building infrastructure projects across Europe. It’s an elegant bridge and in most cities would be prominently signposted; in Girona it’s just a bridge people use to cross the river.

Where to Eat

Girona has El Celler de Can Roca, one of the world’s most celebrated restaurants, which has held three Michelin stars since 2009 and has been ranked the best restaurant in the world multiple times. Booking requires planning six to twelve months in advance, and the tasting menu is significant investment.

For everyone else: the city has a very good food scene in the €15–30 per person range that reflects Catalan cuisine well. The market at Plaça Calvet i Rubalcaba sells fresh produce. The Barri Vell has restaurants that, because they’re serving a local clientele rather than a tourist transit market, tend to be better value than equivalent Barcelona options.

What Most People Miss

The Arab Baths (Banys Àrabs) are a Romanesque building from the 12th century, built in the Arab bath style but by Christian architects after the Arab period in Catalonia. They’re small, well-preserved, and almost always overlooked. Entry is around €4.

The Collegiate Church of Sant Feliu is older than the cathedral and contains eight Roman sarcophagi built into the walls — pagan Roman sarcophagi, repurposed by medieval Christians for the bones of early saints. This is a remarkably strange and underappreciated thing to look at.

The Archaeological Museum occupies a Romanesque monastery and has collections from the Roman period through the medieval period, including an intact Roman mosaic floor.

None of these will appear in the typical “day trip from Barcelona” article, which tends to stop at “coloured houses and cathedral.” All of them are interesting.

When to Go

Girona works year-round. The Festival Temps de Flors in May fills the city with flowers arranged in courtyards and public spaces — it’s worth specifically planning around if you can. July and August are crowded by local standards (not by Barcelona standards). November through February is quiet, cooler, and significantly cheaper for accommodation.

The Christmas market in the old city in December is one of the more tasteful ones in Catalonia — small enough to actually browse, big enough to be worth the trip.

The Honest Assessment

Girona is not as spectacular as Barcelona in raw terms — there’s no Gaudí, no waterfront, no Picasso Museum. But it offers something Barcelona has increasingly lost: the feeling of a city that exists for itself rather than for its visitors. The old city is inhabited, used, lived in. The restaurants serve what people here actually eat. The pace is different.

If you’re spending more than three days in Catalonia and you haven’t planned for Girona, you’ve made a mistake worth correcting.

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