Walk up Montsacopa in the middle of the town and stand in the crater

Go into the crater of Santa Margarida and find the chapel built in the bottom of it

Walk into the quarried face of Croscat and read the eruption layers from the inside

Walk the Fageda d'en Jordà, the beech wood growing directly on an old lava flow

Eat cuina volcànica, which is what Olot calls its own cooking and takes seriously

The whole municipality of Olot lies inside the Garrotxa Volcanic Zone natural park, and the town has a volcano in the middle of it: Montsacopa, also called Sant Francesc, a textbook cone with a circular crater and a 360-degree view over the comarca. The French blew up the fort on top of it before finally leaving Olot on 9 March 1814. The best-known cones in the park are Santa Margarida, which has a chapel in its crater, and Croscat, cut open by quarrying so that you can walk into the inside of a volcano and read the layers.

Olot and the Garrotxa Volcanoes

Cross the fortified bridge over the Fluvià and notice that it changes direction partway across

Go down into the mikveh, the Jewish ritual bath, which is one of very few left standing in Europe

Find the monastery church of Sant Pere and the old pilgrims' hospital of Sant Julià

Work out the political story: capital of its own county from 902, absorbed into Barcelona in 1111, and frozen afterwards

Find the Casa Cornellà, one of the best-preserved Romanesque civil buildings in Catalonia

Besalú became the capital of an independent county after Wilfred the Hairy died in 902, and lost that status in 1111 when Bernat III died without an heir and the county passed to the house of Barcelona. What is left is an unusually intact medieval town: the angled fortified bridge over the Fluvià, the monastery church of Sant Pere, the old pilgrims' hospital of Sant Julià, the Casa Cornellà, and — the rarest thing here — the Jewish ritual baths, a mikveh, one of very few surviving in Europe.

Besalú: A Medieval County Town and Its Mikveh

Stand in front of the 12th-century portal and work out that it is laid out as a Roman triumphal arch

Read the carving as a programme rather than decoration, and work out what it is narrating

Find the tombs of the counts of Barcelona and Besalú

Find out what the scriptorium here produced and why Ripoll is named beside Fleury and Montecassino

Go on to Sant Joan de les Abadesses, which Wilfred founded for his daughter Emma

Wilfred the Hairy reconquered and repopulated the Ripoll valley and the Vic plain between 878 and 881 and founded this monastery around 880, probably on a Visigothic site. It became the burial place of the counts of Barcelona and of Besalú, and its scriptorium made it one of the great cultural centres of medieval Europe, in the same conversation as Saint-Denis, Fleury and Montecassino. In the 12th century it got a new doorway built as a triumphal arch — a vast carved programme that is one of the major works of Catalan Romanesque sculpture.

Ripoll: The Cradle of Catalonia

Get to the Plaça Major on a market morning, which is what the square was built for

Buy llonganissa de Vic and work out why the fog and cold of this plain are what cures it

Find the crypt and bell tower of Bishop Oliba's cathedral of 1038 inside the later building

Go into the Museu Episcopal for one of the best collections of Catalan Romanesque and Gothic art anywhere

Come for the Mercat del Ram, the old livestock fair, which is the town's original market

Bishop Oliba consecrated the Romanesque cathedral at Vic in 1038, and its crypt and bell tower are still there inside the later building. The town has always been a place of fairs and markets — the oldest is the Mercat del Ram, a livestock fair — and the Plaça Major is one of the largest arcaded squares in Catalonia, still filling with stalls twice a week. Vic is also the sausage capital of Catalonia: the llonganissa cured here has a protected designation, and the reason is the town's particular combination of cold, fog and altitude.

Vic: A Market Square and a Bishop's Museum

Walk the Call, one of the best-preserved medieval Jewish quarters in Spain, and find out who Nahmanides was

Climb the cathedral steps and stand under the widest Gothic nave in the world — 22.98 metres, beaten by no church but St Peter's

Walk the Passeig de la Muralla along the top of the Carolingian and late-medieval walls, with its viewpoint over the whole city

Find the confluence: Girona sits where the Ter, Onyar, Galligants and Güell all meet

Photograph the coloured houses hanging over the Onyar, which is the standard view of the city for a reason

A Jewish community is documented in Girona from about 885, and by the 12th century the town held one of the most important Kabbalistic schools in Europe; its rabbi, Moshe ben Nahman — Nahmanides — was made Great Rabbi of Catalonia. It ended in 1492 with the Alhambra Decree. The Call is one of the best-preserved Jewish quarters in Spain. The cathedral above it has the widest Gothic nave in the world at 22.98 metres, second-widest of any church after St Peter's, redesigned by Pere Sacoma in 1312 with a vault 35 metres up.

Girona: The Call and the Widest Gothic Nave on Earth

Take the cremallera up from Ribes de Freser, because there is no road into the valley

Put your head under St Giles's pot and ring the bell, which is what the sanctuary is actually known for

Find out what was drafted here in 1931 and why it is called the Statute of Núria

Walk up towards the Puigmal on the ridge above the valley

Work out the story: a hermit around 700, four objects hidden, and a shepherd finding them in 1079

Núria is a valley at 2,000 metres in the eastern Pyrenees with no road into it — you arrive by rack railway from Ribes de Freser or you walk. The sanctuary at the top is where the first Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia was drafted in 1931, which is why it is called the Statute of Núria. The tradition is older: St Giles is said to have reached the valley around the year 700, leaving behind a Virgin, a cross, a bell and the pot he cooked in, all of them found in 1079. Women wanting children put their head under the pot and ring the bell.

Vall de Núria: A Rack Railway to a Statute

Put a hand on the forged iron cross at 2,785 m and work out what it took to get it there: the Notre-Dame-la-Real scout troop of Perpignan carried it up from their meeting rooms in the town in 1943, in the middle of the occupation — and look at what it is bolted into, an orthogneiss that began as granite 425 million years ago and was cooked into its present state when the Pyrenees' ancestors were built

From the summit, work round the horizon and see how far you can honestly claim: the Conflent and the Roussillon plain below, the Empordà over the border, Barcelona to the south on a clear day, and north-east at sunrise the Massif Central and Mont Ventoux — in the right refraction, the Écrins

Walk the 250 metres up from Casteil to Saint-Martin-du-Canigou and find the thing that makes it rare: two churches stacked one on the other, the lower one cut partly into the rock and dedicated to the Virgin, the upper one to Saint Martin, consecrated in November 1009 — then count the cloister galleries and work out which three are original

Go up for the night of 22 June, stay with the fire the crowd lights on the summit and keeps watch over until dawn, and then follow one of the groups that sets off downhill with a torch — each one carrying the flame to a different Saint John's fire somewhere in Catalonia

Look into the north cirque between the Canigou and the pic Barbet at 2,712 m and find the hanging patch of old snow at around 2,450 m — all that is left of the glacier that once filled the whole bowl — then count the climate bands you have driven and walked through on the way up, Mediterranean to about 1,000 m, montane to 1,700, subalpine to 2,300 and alpine above that, with no permanent snow zone at all

The Canigou is the most easterly of the high Pyrenean summits at 2,785m, standing over the Conflent with a forged iron cross on top that Perpignan scouts carried up in 1943. It was made a Grand Site de France in 2012 as the sacred mountain of Catalan country: on the eve of Saint John, 22 June, hundreds climb to the summit, and at daybreak groups come down with torches to light the Saint John's fires across Catalonia.

The Pic du Canigou: The Catalans' Sacred Mountain

Climb to the monastery and look back down over the bay of Roses and the Cap de Creus

Work out why a church this size is on a remote headland at all — the answer involves relics shipped out of Rome in 610

Walk up to the ruined castle of Sant Salvador de Verdera above it, which is what protected the monastery

Work out why it was built here rather than in the valley, and what it was watching

Find out what happened after 1793, when the Benedictines left, and what the excavations after 1990 turned up in the lower cloister

Sant Pere de Rodes stands high on the northern flank of the Serra de Rodes, above El Port de la Selva, with the whole bay of Roses and the Cap de Creus laid out beneath it. It was repeatedly plundered from the 17th century and the Benedictines finally left in 1793. Excavations after 1990 turned up gold and silver coins, old ceramic tiles and Romanesque painting in a lower cloister nobody knew existed until the middle of the 20th century — and the scale of the church, absurd for so isolated a spot, is explained by relics identified as St Peter's, taken out of Rome by sea in 610.