Why was a massive stone tower built in the llogaret de Vallferosa? For years, scientific studies placed its construction around 970 AD, considering it a military lookout and part of a connected line of fortifications. However, recent carbon dating of wood remains suggests an earlier origin in the 8th or 9th centuries. According to a 2020 study, this older dating suggests the tower may have been built during the era of Muslim presence, serving more as a tool for fiscal control than defense, allowing authorities to monitor and tax ancestral communication routes for trade and transhumance.
The tower remains a masterpiece of medieval engineering. On the top floor, you can still see the machicolations, which feature a unique system of large timbers joined diagonally. These allowed defenders to fire downward and sideways through gaps at the base, a system with no recorded equivalent in other fortifications. The entrance is located ten metres off the ground, a common feature for nearly indestructible fortresses that were only inhabited during sieges, likely accessed via a removable rope ladder.
On the fourth floor, the tower preserves a portion of the only Romanesque vault in all of Europe that has never been modified. It sits near a first-floor dome covered in runes, whose purpose remains a mystery - it may have served as a warehouse, a prison, a cistern, or the start of a secret passage. Today, the tower can only be reached on foot via a trail from the LV-3005a road, standing just above the Barranc dels Quadros.
Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons
Written by Nicolo Ciampini
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