Santuari dels Àngels
Food stop · Girona
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The Santuari dels Àngels is a hilltop sanctuary and restaurant at 484 metres in the Gavarres massif near Girona, reached by a road popular with cyclists and used as a training climb by professionals. Its summit hosts the podium celebrations for an annual hill-climb time trial up the roughly 10-kilometre western ascent, and the restaurant serves Catalan rural dishes such as Els Àngels rice and Catalan-style cod.
On 8 August 1958, Salvador Dalí and Gala were married here in a secret ceremony witnessed by only five people, then rode down into Girona for their wedding lunch at a restaurant in the old town. The sanctuary itself is far older: a rector from Sant Martí Vell obtained a bishop's license to build the hermitage in 1409, and by 1683 a confraternity had added a hostelry beside the chapel for pilgrims climbing the massif. The buildings were sacked during the Wars of the Spanish Succession and burned again by French troops during the 1809 siege of Girona, which is why what stands today has been rebuilt more than once. The restaurant keeps to old Catalan rural cooking, weighted toward local, seasonal ingredients, and the terrace looks out over the plain toward the Pyrenees and the sea.
What you see
The chapel and hostelry sit at the highest point of the Gavarres, with a terrace opening onto a panorama of the Girona plain, the Baix Empordà and the Pyrenees beyond.
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