What is the best view of the Besalú bridge?

* The author is part of the community of readers of La Vanguardia.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
18 October 2023 Wednesday 16:53
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What is the best view of the Besalú bridge?

* The author is part of the community of readers of La Vanguardia

The Romanesque bridge of Besalú, in the Garrotxa region, is spectacular over the Fluvià river. And, if we look at it from below, we see it even more grandly, as seen in The Photos of the Readers of La Vanguardia.

It is an angular bridge with seven unequal arches that are located on top of pillars, many of them in the rock. Above the fifth pillar rises the fortified tower.

Although in this report I am based on the bridge from the Fluvià river, Besalú deserves a visit without haste and with breaks, as it is wonderful. Not in vain, already in 1966, it was declared a Historic-Artistic Site for its great architectural value.

The first information we have about this Romanesque bridge is from the year 1075. At the end of the first section, between the fourth and fifth arches, there is a widening of the road and later, between the sixth and seventh, there is another. The fortified access portal is superimposed on the first pillar of the bridge.

Above the fifth pillar rises the fortified tower, with a hexagonal plan with two superimposed semicircular arches, on the east side, and with a pointed arch and loopholes at the top, on the west side.

On one of the ashlars of the central pillar of the second section, there is a heraldic stone with the date 1680, which suggests a large-scale restoration or even an almost total reconstruction of the bridge.