A Village Carved Into Living Rock With an Eight-Room Hotel: Peratallada Survived Eight Centuries Without Becoming a Theme Park

There are places sold by a travel agency and places sold by their own stone street. Peratallada, a medieval village in Baix Emporda in Girona, belongs to the second kind. The name literally means "carved stone" - and that is not marketing, it is a description of what is under your feet.

The entire village is cut into living rock. The moat around it was not banked up but excavated from the stone, meaning somebody spent decades digging to build a defence. Today tourists walk those same streets looking for shade and a good photograph. The irony is that the village kept its shape precisely because for centuries nobody had the money to change it.

What is worth seeing: the medieval castle with its tower, the Clock Tower with a viewpoint over the whole plain, the Romanesque church of Sant Esteve and the Virgin's Gate - the only surviving old gate. The street along the walls is called Carrer del Marques Robert, which is reason enough for one Spanish TV weather presenter to write that he feels "like a marquis" there.

The practical detail: the village is a few kilometres from the beaches of Pals and Begur, which means you do not have to choose between stone and sea. There are restaurants, ceramics workshops and a small hotel in a twelfth-century building with eight rooms. Eight. That figure explains the whole logic of the place - nobody arrives here in a group of fifty.

Does this resemble anything of ours? The Kratovo towers, the old bazaars, the stone that is everywhere in this country. The difference is not the material - we have that. The difference is that over there somebody decided nothing was to be demolished and held that decision long enough for it to become a habit. Would a village like this survive three mayoral terms here without a new facade?

If you are heading to Catalonia this summer, Peratallada does not ask for a whole day. It asks for three hours, a dinner and the willingness to walk on stone in uncomfortable shoes. That is a reasonable price for a village that survived eight centuries without becoming a theme park.