Prades

The  little town of Prades  (population just 6,900) is located 350 metres above sea level in the valley of the Tet at the foot of Mount Canigou  mid way between the ski resorts of the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean Sea.   It is close to Andorra and a two and a half hour drive from Barcelona.  It is accessible by train and bus on the Perpignan-Villefranche-La Tour de Carol route.

The Catalan cellist Pau (Pablo) Casals was a fierce opponent of the Spanish Franco regime and lived in Prades as an exile.  In 1950 he launched the famous Pablo Casals Chamber Music Festival which is held here annually from late July to mid August in the abbey of St-Michel-de-Cuxa. There is also a small museum in the town dedicated to his memory.

Although a lot of the town was destroyed during the Revolution it is still a beautiful place to visit, with its crenellated Romanesque tower at the Gothic Church of St Pierre standing proud against the wooded slopes of Mount Canigou.  The church has an impressive bare stone crypt and an altar slab which was rediscovered doubling as a balcony on a house in the village of Vinça. The exceptional area here is the cloister with twelfth century capitals carved in rose-pink marble from Villefranche.  They are adorned with highly stylized human, animal and vegetable motifs which are exactly to scale.  There is a monastery in Prades which is still inhabited by a small community of Benedictine monks from Montserrat in Spain. 

There is a wide range of leisure activities on offer here including rambling, canyoning, mountain biking, horse riding, potholing and orienteering. If you need treatment for skin diseases or metabolic disorders, then the spa of Molitg-les-Bains is just 4.5 km outside the village in the Gorge de Castillane.

Prades offers a wide range of accommodation in the town, with hotels and spa resorts ranging from 1 to 4 stars, a municipal campsite situated on the river on the road to Molitg-les-Bains, holiday lets, bed and breakfast and chalets.