Manresa Travel Guide

Trains from Montserrat Aeri take less than an hour to reach the small industrial town of MANRESA , to the north; it's also on the less-direct Barcelona-Lleida train route, which passes through Terrassa. The train stops alongside the river that runs through the town, and you barely need to get off to appreciate Manresa's only real attraction - the crumbling Santa Maria de la Seu towering on a rock outpost overhead. Begun in the fourteenth century, this huge church took two hundred years to build, and is decorated by diving gargoyles and a great circular window over the three frontal arches. From the church, a few minutes' walk takes you downhill to the Plaça Major, where there's a bar-restaurant (with a bargain menú del dia ) where you can fill in the time waiting for your return train. There's little else to do except wander the steep old town streets, looking for some of the more unusual buildings - little minaretted houses with circular terraces and bay windows.