Àger Castle and the Collegiate Church of Sant Pere, with a guided tour of the old town

What crowns Àger, at the top of the village and above the valley, is a castle and a church walled in a single complex. A Muslim fortress stood here before. In 1048 Arnau Mir de Tost definitively conquered the valley, made the castle his residence and power base with his wife, Arsenda, and ordered the church of Sant Pere to be built, which soon had a community of canons. Two papal bulls, of 1060 and 1065, removed it from the bishop's authority and placed it directly under Rome.

Nine centuries on a hill

What remains runs from the 11th to the 16th century. The church is Romanesque, Lombard in style, with Gothic alterations, and has a crypt underneath that is the oldest part. In the 14th century Count Pere I of Urgell replaced the Romanesque cloister with a Gothic one, and the refectory and chapter house are Renaissance. Of the castle, the residential tower and the main tower survive, which Turisme d'Àger describes as the largest in comital Catalonia. The complex declined in the 15th century with the depopulation of the valley and the war against John II, was secularised in 1592 and was later battered by the Reapers' War, the War of the Spanish Succession and the Peninsular War. In 1829 it was fortified again for the Carlist wars and was abandoned at the end of the 19th century. Some of its mural paintings are today in the MNAC, the Diocesan Museum of Lleida and in the United States.

Three ways to visit

The town council organises the visits. The guided old town tour costs €10 and leaves from the Portal del Pedró: it goes round the walled town, with the wall almost complete, enters the church of Sant Vicenç and climbs to the collegiate church. The guided collegiate church tour alone, €5, starts at its main door. Self-guided entry to the collegiate church costs €3. Under-6s enter free, and €3 is paid by ages 7 to 15, young people of 16 or more with a student card or Carnet Jove and over-65s, who must carry the document that proves it.

Days and times are published at reserves.ager.cat, where you buy the ticket until 19:00 the day before. If you haven't booked, you can pay by card at the meeting point when you start. Groups of 20 or more write to [email protected]. For queries, the visits phone is 973 455 004.

What they don't show you up there

In Sant Vicenç, the village parish church, is the 3rd-century Roman sarcophagus that came from the collegiate church and a Baroque organ from 1865, one of the few in Catalonia preserved whole. And the Portal del Pedró, with its arcades, is the gate of the old town. The old town tour goes through both places, and that is why it costs double the collegiate church alone.

Going up without a car and with good shoes

Don't drive up to the collegiate church: park in the signed areas of the village and walk up cobbled, steep streets. The route is not adapted and the ground is uneven; bring firm footwear and water. For lunch before or after, Casa Xalets is in the village, and at night the Parc Astronòmic is a quarter of an hour away by car. The three together are the plan of collegiate church, telescopes and farmhouse dinner.