 The small town of Pals owes its hilltop location to the abundant marshy areas that used to surround it. The municipality has 2,793 inhabitants, distributed mainly between the town of Pals itself, the Masos de Pals area and Platja de Pals.
The town is a medieval walled enclosure, now restored and very well conserved. Of the old castle there only remains the Torre de les Hores, a beautiful example of a Romanesque fortress tower. All around the town centre you can see splendid Gothic buildings, like the present-day museum of submarine archaeology Ca La Pruna, a fortified mansion from the 15th-16th C. with two towers, and the church of Sant Pere.
Dispersed throughout the municipal district there are a large number of fortified farmhouses and watchtowers from the 16th to 18th C., notably the old Pals Mill.
Pals is the region’s rice town. The cultivation of the crop has been abandoned and reintroduced several times over the ages, but is now in full swing once again.
In the area known as Masos de Pals, leading off from the old centre crowned by the church of Sant Fructuós, residential estates have been developed, taking advantage of the rolling pine-clad hills that spread down to the beach.
One of the most characteristic pictures of our coastline is the wide-open 3,5-kilometre long Pals beach with the Medes Islands in the background. Its special topography makes it the ideal spot for a number of water sports, like windsurfing. Pals organises a large number of markets, festivities, fairs and concerts, and at Christmas it stages a Living Nativity in the attractive settings offered by its old town.
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