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Both are lovers of history and archaeology, and Empúries is a magical place where the modern Mediterranean coexists with its Roman (Emporiae) and Greek (Emporion) past.
Being able to rest in the very spot where, over a century ago, Josep Puig i Cadafalch directed the excavations at Empúries is an indescribable feeling; it is history knocking at your door, sharing breakfast with you, and enjoying views that have remained unchanged for centuries.
There are places where history is preserved in books. And there are places where history lies beneath your feet. Empúries belongs to the second kind. Walking along the coast from Sant Martí d'Empúries, with the Mediterranean on one side and pine trees on the other, it is difficult not to feel that this landscape has been waiting for travellers for thousands of years.
Today, the Camí de Ronda follows one of the most beautiful stretches of the Empordà coastline. But more than 2,500 years ago, other travellers were already arriving here from across the sea. They were Greeks. And they came to trade.
Around 575 BC, Greek settlers from Phocaea, through their colony of Massalia -modern Marseille- established themselves on a small island close to the coast. This first settlement, the Palaia Polis or Old City, occupied the promontory where Sant Martí d'Empúries stands today.
Some decades later, they expanded onto the mainland. The new settlement became Emporion. Its name says almost everything. Emporion meant a trading place, a market, a place where people and goods met. And that is precisely what Emporion became. Not merely a Greek city on the western edge of the Mediterranean, but a meeting point between worlds.
The Greeks who settled at Emporion did not arrive in an empty land. The indigenous Iberian communities were already living here. What developed was therefore not simply a transplanted Greek world but a frontier of contact, exchange and negotiation. Ships brought ceramics, wine, oil and manufactured products from across the Mediterranean. From the surrounding territories came agricultural products, metals and other goods. But objects were not the only things travelling. Ideas travelled. Languages travelled. Religious beliefs travelled. Art travelled. Ways of measuring, trading and understanding the world travelled too.
Emporion became one of the great gateways through which Mediterranean culture entered the Iberian Peninsula. That is perhaps why standing among its ruins feels so different from visiting an archaeological site isolated from its surroundings. The sea is still there. You can see it from the ancient streets. And suddenly geography explains history. The Greeks chose this place because the Mediterranean was not a barrier. It was their road.
Centuries later, another Mediterranean power arrived at exactly the same place. In 218 BC, during the Second Punic War, Roman troops commanded by Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio landed at Emporion as Rome began its military intervention in the Iberian Peninsula. That landing would have enormous consequences. The Roman presence expanded. A military camp was established. Eventually a Roman city grew beside the Greek one.
Emporion became Emporiae.
Today, Empúries is exceptional because it is the only archaeological site in the Iberian Peninsula where the remains of a Greek city and a Roman city coexist side by side. Walking through the site means moving physically between two civilizations. In the Greek city we can still identify the Agora, sanctuaries, streets, houses and commercial spaces. In the Roman city appear another urban language: the Forum, the Basilica, the Curia, baths, shops and large houses decorated with mosaics.
Two cities. Two political systems. Two cultures. And one Mediterranean landscape.
Yet eventually both cities declined. By Late Antiquity, population had increasingly concentrated again around the old Palaia Polis -the place we visited in Sant Martí d'Empúries. The great classical city slowly disappeared beneath the earth. For centuries, Empúries became a memory.
Until archaeology brought it back. And here another fascinating chapter begins. Not in the sixth century BC. But in the twentieth century.
In 1908, the Junta de Museus de Barcelona began systematic archaeological excavations at Empúries under the direction of Josep Puig i Cadafalch.
Puig i Cadafalch is usually remembered as one of the great architects of Catalan Modernisme. Casa Amatller. Casa de les Punxes. Casa Martí. The Casaramona factory. But reducing him to architecture would mean missing an extraordinary part of his intellectual life. He was also an art historian, archaeologist, scholar of Romanesque architecture, founder of the Institut d'Estudis Catalans and later president of the Mancomunitat de Catalunya. For Puig i Cadafalch, studying the past was not an antiquarian curiosity.
Understanding the architecture, archaeology and art of earlier centuries was a way of understanding the historical formation of Catalunya itself. And Empúries offered something extraordinary. Here was tangible evidence that the history of this land belonged to the great history of the Mediterranean. Puig i Cadafalch promoted and directed the excavations from 1908 until 1923.
Under the soil began to reappear streets. Walls. Temples. Houses. Mosaics. Inscriptions. Objects that had last been touched by people two thousand years earlier. Archaeology was giving a forgotten city back its voice.
But there is a much more intimate part of this story that I particularly love. Just beside the archaeological site, overlooking the Mediterranean, stands today the beautiful Hostal Empúries. Its story began in 1907. The original building was called Villa Teresita, and it was built specifically to accommodate the archaeologists working on the recovery of Empúries.
Think about that for a moment. More than a century ago, archaeologists slept here while one of the most important archaeological sites in Catalunya was beginning to emerge from the earth only a few hundred metres away. In the morning they could leave the house and walk towards the excavations. At the end of the working day, they returned towards the sea. Perhaps they discussed the discoveries they had made that morning.
A wall. A mosaic. A Greek inscription. A fragment of pottery. A coin. A sculpture. Small pieces of evidence from which an entire city had to be reconstructed.
Villa Teresita eventually evolved into the present Hostal Empúries, becoming an early landmark of tourism in the area even before the expression Costa Brava became established. And somehow that continuity seems perfect. A building created for people who came here because of the past eventually became a place for people who come here because of the beauty of the present.
And what a present it is. There are archaeological sites whose surroundings have been swallowed by modern cities. Empúries has been extraordinarily fortunate. The landscape remains an essential part of the experience. The Mediterranean lies only metres away. Pine trees frame the coastline. Small beaches interrupt the rocks. The camí de ronda connects L'Escala, the beaches, the archaeological site and Sant Martí d'Empúries. And beside the path stands the old home of the archaeologists. It creates an almost perfect sequence: sea, path, hotel, ruins, Sant Martí.
But these are not separate places. They belong to the same story. The Greek sailors saw this coastline. The Roman soldiers saw it. Medieval inhabitants of Empúries saw it. Puig i Cadafalch and his archaeologists saw it. And we see it today.
The landscape becomes the one element connecting people separated by more than two millennia.
Perhaps this is why the work begun in 1908 matters so much. Archaeology does more than recover objects. It restores relationships. A piece of pottery tells us about trade. A coin tells us about power. A house tells us about family and wealth. A temple tells us about belief. A street tells us how people moved. A harbour tells us where they came from. And Empúries tells us that this corner of the Empordà has never really been peripheral.
For the Greeks who sailed westwards across the Mediterranean, it was a gateway. For Rome, it became an entry point into the Iberian Peninsula. For medieval Catalunya, nearby Sant Martí became the centre of a county. And for the archaeologists of the twentieth century, Empúries became a place where the country's ancient Mediterranean past could literally be brought back into the light.
More than a century after Puig i Cadafalch began directing the excavations, archaeological research continues here. There is something wonderfully appropriate about that. Because Empúries is still unfinished. There are still questions beneath the earth.
Perhaps the Greeks chose the perfect name. Emporion. A meeting place. Because this has always been a place of encounters. Between Greeks and Iberians. Between Greece and Rome. Between land and sea. Between archaeology and memory. Between the ancient world and modern Catalunya.
And walking today along the Camí de Ronda, past the old house that once welcomed Puig i Cadafalch's archaeologists, towards the ruins with the Mediterranean glittering beside them, those different periods of history seem strangely close to one another.
Today, in Sant Martí d'Empúries, we have stand where medieval Catalunya began to take shape. We only have needed to walk a few hundred metres to travel much further back. To a time when ships appeared on the horizon carrying merchants from the other side of the Mediterranean. They came looking for a place to trade. They founded Emporion. And more than 2,500 years later, we are still walking through its streets.
More information: Patrimoni Cultural. Generalitat de Catalunya
Empúries és una immensa interrogant
dreçada davant la consciència dels estudiosos,
i sols ella mateixa i en ella mateixa es tanca la resposta.
Empúries is an immense question
standing before the minds of scholars,
and only within Empúries itself lies the answer.
Caterina Albert
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