* The author is part of the community of readers of La Vanguardia
I have titled this photograph for La Vanguardia Readers’ Photos as The Guardians of Sant Pere de Rodes, that is, the Vall de Santa Creu, in El Port de la Selva, in Alt Empordà.
The Vall de Santa Creu is a population center included in the Inventory of the Architectural Heritage of Catalonia. It is the closest inhabited place to the monastery of Sant Pere de Rodes and is believed to have been formed when the town of Santa Creu de Rodes was abandoned.
It is currently made up of around thirty houses and farmhouses interwoven between narrow and steep streets, mostly cobbled. This town is located between Puig de la Vall and Coll del Perer,
For its part, the Benedictine monastery of Sant Pere de Rodes was built on the slopes of the Verdera mountain. Maximum exponent of the Romanesque style, the central part of its structure is the cloister, from the 12th century. The rest of the buildings are distributed around it.
It has a Latin cross plan with three naves with a barrel vault delimited by a double colonnade with capitals of Corinthian influence.
This church originally synthesizes a series of previous architectural trends, such as Carolingian, pre-Romanesque and Roman constructions. For this reason, it is considered one of the main exponents of the Romanesque in Catalonia.
