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

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

Put a hand near the Font del Lleó and work out how hot around 74°C actually feels coming out of the ground

Go into the Roman baths in the centre, part of which has survived continuously since antiquity

Find out that Pliny the Elder wrote about these baths as Aquae Calidae, and work out what two thousand years of continuous use means

Take a treatment at one of the working balnearis, which is the same reason the Romans stopped here

Work out why the water is that hot — how deep it has been and how fast it comes back up

Caldes de Montbui has been a spa town since it was Roman Aquae Calidae, and part of the Roman bath building in the middle of it is still standing. The water comes out of the ground at 74°C, which makes it one of the hottest springs in Europe. Pliny the Elder mentions the baths here, under the name Aquae Calidae, in his account of Roman Hispania — so the place has been written about as a spa for two thousand years and has never stopped being one.

Caldes de Montbui: The Hottest Spring in the Peninsula

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

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

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

Go into the salt mountain and work out that the rock around you is salt all the way through

Work out where the dukes' money came from and how far it took them in the Crown of Aragon

Go into Sant Vicenç inside the castle, one of the earliest Lombard Romanesque churches in Catalonia

Find the Torre de la Minyona, fifteen metres high and over ten across, built in the 11th century

Find out what happened on 18 September 1714 and why Cardona held out longest

Cardona has a mountain made of salt — a diapir of rock salt pushed up to the surface, mined since the Neolithic and the source of the dukes of Cardona's wealth, which in the 15th century made them the most important family in the Crown of Aragon after the royal house itself. Wilfred the Hairy built the castle in 886; its jewel is the 11th-century Torre de la Minyona, fifteen metres high and over ten across, and the Romanesque church of Sant Vicenç. On 18 September 1714, after a siege that wrecked the walls, Cardona was the last place in Catalonia to surrender to Philip V.

Cardona: A Mountain of Salt and the Last Castle to Fall

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

Go to the costume museum in Ansó church and work out how many pieces the traditional dress has

Come on the last Sunday in August, when the village wears it

Find out what cheso is and how a dialect survives in one valley and not the next

Look at the chimneys on the houses and work out what they were built that size for

Drive up into the Selva de Oza and walk to the Boca del Infierno gorge

Ansó and Hecho are the two westernmost valleys of the Aragonese Pyrenees, and they kept a distinct identity long after the rest — their own dialect, Aragonese in a form called cheso in Hecho, and a traditional women's costume of such complexity that it is one of the most elaborate surviving folk dresses in Europe, still brought out for the last Sunday in August. The villages are stone and slate with enormous chimneys. Behind them the Selva de Oza and the Valles Occidentales park run up to the French border.