Berga Old Town

What it is

Berga's old town is a handful of narrow, sloping streets, at 704 m above sea level, at the foot of the Queralt range. You can walk it in three quarters of an hour without hurrying, and it is free. What is interesting is not one great monument but the ensemble: the square where the Patum is held every year, the church, the last gate of the city wall and Carrer Major with its museums. It is the visit to make before or after going up to Queralt, or for a meal in the town.

What to see, step by step

1. Plaça de Sant Pere, also called Plaça Cremada. It has been the centre of the town since the Middle Ages. Here stood the Romanesque church of Sant Pere, demolished in the 18th century to build the current one. It is the main stage of the Patum.
2. Town Hall: in the same square, the work of the architect Emili Porta from 1929, with a historicist facade.
3. Church of Santa Eulàlia: the parish church, with a single nave and side chapels, built where Sant Pere stood.
4. Carrer Major: the old town's main street, with long-established shops. On it are the Museu Comarcal de Berga, with collections of ethnology, history and natural sciences, and the Museu Municipal, with ceramics, medieval objects and prehistoric remains. Check their opening hours first, because they change with the season.
5. Portal de Santa Magdalena: the only one left of the seven gates of the medieval wall, from the 14th century, which was partly demolished about four centuries later.
6. Pietat Chapel, from the 17th century.
7. Church of Sant Joan, outside the oldest core: Romanesque in origin, from the 13th century, remodelled in the Gothic period and in the 18th. It has been a historic-artistic monument since 1983.

If you have the legs for it, climb to the Torre de la Petita, in the range of the same name: it was built in 1838, in the middle of the Carlist war, and is one of the few Carlist military structures still standing.

The Patum

The Patum is Berga's festival and is recognised by UNESCO as world heritage. It is held at Corpus Christi, over five days, with parades and, above all, the leaps in the Plaça de Sant Pere, with the figures of the plens wrapped in fire and the square packed. The organisers remind visitors that it is not a correfoc: at each plens leap, 900 fuets and 100 flares are burned. If you go, wear clothes that don't catch fire easily, don't carry a rucksack or glass containers and move around the square anticlockwise, as the organisers ask.

The dates follow the Corpus Christi calendar, between late May and late June. The programme is published on the Patum's official website.

Getting there and parking

Berga is next to the C-16, a little over an hour by car from Barcelona and half an hour from Manresa. The old town has narrow streets with little room to park: leave the car on Passeig de la Indústria (exit Berga centre and, at the roundabout, Carrer Vila de Casserres) and walk up by Ronda Moreta and Plaça del Dr. Saló to Plaça de Sant Pere. Plaça de Sant Francesc, where the walk up to Queralt starts, is a good point to link the two.

The Berguedà Tourist Office is on the C-16, at km 96, and opens on weekday mornings; for weekends, confirm the hours by telephone.

With children, pushchairs and accessibility

The streets have quite a lot of slope and a few flights of steps. With a pushchair it is possible, though tiring; in a wheelchair the route is difficult outside Plaça de Sant Pere. With children, the visit works better if you shorten it to the square and Carrer Major and finish in one of the bars on the square.

Where to eat

In Berga itself, La Cabana serves seasonal Berguedà cooking in a former inn. Its menu includes mountain rice with black butifarra and mushrooms and pork snout with Berguedà black peas.