The streets of Cadaqués old town: from es Portal to the church along carrer des Call

The old town of Cadaqués is the former walled enclosure: you enter through es Portal, next to the Platja Gran, climb carrer des Call to the church of Santa Maria, and the other main street runs along es Baluard to the Town Hall square. The streets are narrow, steep and paved with slate.

The old town of Cadaqués is small: a rocky hill with the church on top and the sea below. For centuries it was the whole village, and it was closed in by a wall. What remains is a gate, a tower and some stretches of wall built into the houses. This guide walks its streets one by one and explains what each one was, using the Generalitat's Inventari del Patrimoni Arquitectònic, the Enciclopèdia Catalana and the village's tourism website.

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A village that fitted inside a wall

According to the record in the Inventari del Patrimoni Arquitectònic, the old core was walled and sits on a rocky hill crowned by the white church of Santa Maria. It runs down to the shore and reaches the cove of Llané Gran. It is made up of narrow, steep streets and alleys paved with slate slabs and stones, and small tucked-away squares.

Visit Cadaqués, the village's tourism website, describes it as a village of medieval origin surrounded by a large wall, covering what is now the historic centre. The Viquipèdia adds that between the 13th and 16th centuries the village grew inside the enclosure of the old castle. The whole ensemble is listed as a cultural asset of national interest.

Es Portal: the gate that survives

You still go in the same way as centuries ago. The Enciclopèdia Catalana explains that the gate of the old enclosure survives: a low arch, whitewashed like everything else, opening onto the Platja Gran. At the other end of the enclosure stood the portal d'Amunt, the upper gate.

That gate has its own story. According to the Viquipèdia, quoting the diary of the Diputació del General, on 19 September 1470 a local man called Joan Sequeres opened the gate at night and handed the town over to the troops of Joan II, in the middle of the Catalan civil war. The Generalitat won it back on 29 December that same year. The Inventari gives the episode more briefly: the town was handed to the royal troops and later recovered.

Carrer des Call

Past the gate begins the main street of the enclosure. The Enciclopèdia Catalana says that from there the steep carrer del Call climbs to the top of the hill, where the church stands. It adds a detail that explains the name: the street name shows that Cadaqués had a Jewish community in the Middle Ages.

It is also the street that best keeps the old paving. Visit Cadaqués says the narrow carrer del Call has the rastell in the best condition, the paving of stones set on edge in a herringbone pattern. Why it is laid that way is explained in our guide to the rastell.

Es Baluard and the Town Hall square

The other main street ran along the spine of the hill. According to the Enciclopèdia Catalana, it followed the «esquena d'ase» des Baluard, the donkey-back ridge, and ended at the little Town Hall square. Between those two streets lies the web of alleys of old Cadaqués.

On the punta des Baluard, also called Riba de Nemesi Llorens, a semicircular tower still stands. Before the seafront promenade was built, the tower rested on rocks pounded by the sea. Visit Cadaqués explains that this bastion, now part of the Town Hall building, is the only piece of the wall that survives, and the Viquipèdia adds that many walls of the houses on the point are made from remains of the old wall. From here, says the Inventari, the village opens out on both sides in two great curves around the bay.

Why a wall was needed

The Inventari sums it up: in the 14th and 15th centuries, and above all in the 16th, Cadaqués was attacked again and again by corsairs. In 1444 they burned the town archive and in 1543 the church and the whole village. Visit Cadaqués attributes the 1543 raid to the pirate Barbarossa.

The church you see on top today is the one that came afterwards. According to Visit Cadaqués, it was decided to build it with the money of fishermen who went out on forbidden days, and a Cadaqués man, Frederic Rahola i Trèmols, put it in verse: the fishermen built the church by working on feast days. Opening times, the climb and the views are in our guide to the church of Santa Maria.

When the village left the walls

The Viquipèdia says that from the 17th century the first houses appeared outside the enclosure, following the coast. In 1683 the quay of Portdoguer was built, with the arcades of its first two houses, and that area became the first suburb outside the wall. After 1714, with the wars over and the corsair threat gone, the houses outside multiplied.

The expansion along both sides of the bay took shape mainly from the mid-19th century, according to the Enciclopèdia Catalana, and later with money sent by emigrants to Cuba. That is why the architecture changes as you leave the old town towards the plaça de les Herbes: that is where the Casa Rahola stands, from around 1860.

Getting there and walking it

The old town is entered on foot. The natural way in is the traditional one: from the Platja Gran, through es Portal, and up carrer des Call. For the car, the bus and parking, see how to get to Cadaqués and where to park.

Wear shoes with a proper sole, because the ground is slate and the streets are real slopes. And don't look for a fixed route: the enclosure is so small that whichever way you climb you end up at the church, and whichever way you go down you end up at the sea.

Checked

Facts checked in October 2026 in: Inventari del Patrimoni Arquitectònic de Catalunya (record for the historic ensemble of Cadaqués), Enciclopèdia Catalana (Cadaqués entry), Visit Cadaqués (culture section) and Viquipèdia (Cadaqués and Conjunt històric de Cadaqués entries), the latter only for historical episodes.