Vic Cathedral

Vic Cathedral tickets: which one to buy

Vic is an hour north of Barcelona by train and is visited as a day trip, usually for the market square rather than the cathedral, which is a mistake. Entry to the church is free; the cloister, the crypt and the bell tower are covered by a small combined ticket sold inside. Take it, because the three paid parts are the oldest and most interesting sections of the building and the free part is the least.

The episcopal museum next door is separate and holds one of the best collections of Romanesque and Gothic altar panels in Catalonia, rivalled only by the national museum in Barcelona, so budget for it as well. Guided walks of the town cover the cathedral, the Roman temple remains and the medieval streets in about two hours. Organised day trips from Barcelona tend to combine Vic with Montseny or with a sausage producer, since the town is the centre of that trade.

Visiting Vic Cathedral: what to see

A cathedral has stood here since at least the sixth century, and the present building is essentially a neoclassical box wrapped around much older fragments. Bishop Oliba rebuilt the church in the eleventh century, and from his campaign the crypt survives, along with a free-standing bell tower of forty-six metres that is one of the best Lombard Romanesque towers in the region. The crypt keeps capitals older still, probably reused from the tenth-century church.

A Gothic cloister was added later, with fine tracery and the tomb of a fourteenth-century philosopher at its centre. The nave you walk into was built between 1781 and 1803. What fills it is unexpected: enormous murals by Josep Maria Sert, painted in sepia and gold, covering the walls with dense, muscular biblical scenes. He painted them once in the 1920s, watched them burn in 1936, and painted them again before his death in 1945. Behind the altar stands a carved alabaster retable of the 1420s by Pere Oller.

Vic Cathedral opening hours and the best time to go

Market days are Tuesday and Saturday, when the arcaded main square fills with stalls and the town is at its liveliest; that is the right day to come, and the cathedral is a five-minute walk from the square. The medieval market in early December is a much bigger affair and draws crowds from across Catalonia. Vic sits in a basin that traps fog in winter and gets genuinely cold, which is part of why the sausage industry settled here.

Summer afternoons are hot and the church closes for several hours in the middle of the day, as does the museum. The Sert murals need light and are best in the morning. Trains from Barcelona run roughly hourly and take a little over an hour. Allow half a day for the cathedral and the museum together, or a full day if you intend to eat properly, which in this town is a reasonable ambition.