{"id":20980,"date":"2010-07-19T18:16:52","date_gmt":"2010-07-19T16:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cbrava.com\/articles\/la-torre-de-labat\/"},"modified":"2015-04-07T18:10:30","modified_gmt":"2015-04-07T16:10:30","slug":"the-tower-of-the-abbot-llanca","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/cbrava.com\/en\/magazine\/the-tower-of-the-abbot-llanca\/","title":{"rendered":"The tower of the Abbot (Llan\u00e7\u00e0)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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If humans live over centuries at one place, reproduce themselves and die, these ancient places accumulate memories that endure.\u00a0 Indeed, historical places, even ruins, often register more visitors than modern luxurious places.\u00a0 In Llan\u00e7\u00e0<\/a>, there is a place at which one seems to feel the souls of the ancestors: The Plaza Mayor.<\/p>\n

Llanca, tower of the abbotThe oldest building at the “Plaza” is the “Torre del Abbat”, the tower of the abbot.\u00a0 Built In the XIII or XIV century, it continues to dominate the heart of the village.\u00a0 Originally the tower was not freestanding, separated and lonely, it was the bell tower of St. Vicen\u00e7 de Llan\u00e7\u00e0 Romanic church.\u00a0 At the tower, one can discover traces of the former church shape over the entrance door.\u00a0 The tower was a bell tower and, in addition, an alarm tower to warn the inhabitants of the village if enemies were approaching.\u00a0 Enemies often came by both land and by sea.<\/p>\n

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By the XVIII century, the St. Vicen\u00e7 church needed to be replaced.\u00a0 Stones from the ancient church were used to build the new church (also called St. Vicen\u00e7), which was also located on the Plaza Mayor.\u00a0 The new St. Vicen\u00e7 church is generally a gothic building with a front between Renaissance and baroque.<\/p>\n

The new church was built on the foundations of the garden of the abbey, in which once the vassals of the abbots of St. Pere de Rodes resided.\u00a0 One of the small roads around the church is still called “Carrer del Castel” \u2013 the road of the castle.<\/p>\n

The choice of building on existing foundations explains the unusually high situation of today’s church.\u00a0 Numerous stairs were thus necessary to enter the church.\u00a0 Similarly, the cemetery moved from the old church and settled around the new one.\u00a0 Later, the cemetery was relocated to the port.\u00a0 One can still discover other evidence of medieval times around the church and in the village; for example, there is still an old city portal.<\/p>\n

Llanca, tower of the abbotFor almost a century, the new church existed without its own bell tower.\u00a0 A shortage of money to complete the new church forced the inhabitants to retain the ancient bell tower to announce the holy mass.\u00a0 This surely saved our tower\u2019s life \u2013 so, we can see, a shortage of money sometimes is a good thing.\u00a0 If they had the money to complete the church, on time, we would now have a Plaza Mayor without its tower.<\/p>\n

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The tower of the abbot does not only have outward charm, a visit to climb inside the tower is also worthwhile.\u00a0 From the top, there is a view of the village, countryside and port.\u00a0 And, inside, there is an exhibition of postcards and photos from past times, showing Llan\u00e7\u00e0 before the tourist boom, with its natural port and only few huts.\u00a0 The Llan\u00e7\u00e0 in the photos has dusty roads, but with maintained fields and gardens.\u00a0\u00a0 The fishing boats rested close to the beach, the hills were without houses and covered by vineyards.\u00a0 This is how Llan\u00e7\u00e0 looked, until not very long ago.<\/p>\n[cetsEmbedGmap src=http:\/\/maps.google.es\/maps?hl=es&gl=es&ie=UTF8&ll=42.363618,3.152733&spn=0.120242,0.220757&z=12 width=350 height=425 marginwidth=0 marginheight=0 frameborder=0 scrolling=no]\n

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If humans live over centuries at one place, reproduce themselves and die, these ancient places accumulate memories that endure.\u00a0 Indeed, historical places, even ruins, often register more visitors than modern luxurious places.\u00a0 In Llan\u00e7\u00e0, there is a place at which one seems to feel the souls of the ancestors: The Plaza Mayor. Llanca, tower of […]\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":0,"parent":942,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-20980","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cbrava.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/20980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cbrava.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cbrava.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cbrava.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/132"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cbrava.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cbrava.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/20980\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cbrava.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cbrava.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}