Nine Romanesque churches stand in the Vall de Boí, high in the Catalan Pyrenees, and together they make one of the most coherent medieval landscapes in Europe. They were built in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, in a style that came from Lombardy with masons who knew how to raise stone towers without much money. UNESCO inscribed the group in 2000, calling them outstanding examples of a distinctive Lombard-Catalan style in a remote mountain setting.
The Santa Maria churches of the valley belong to that group, with their tall, slender bell towers rising in several storeys of small arched windows. Their interiors once held frescoes of astonishing quality, painted in strong reds, blues and ochres, and the best of them were removed in the early twentieth century to the National Art Museum of Catalonia in Barcelona for safe keeping, with copies and projections now in place in the churches themselves. It is an odd experience to stand in a small stone church and see a ghost image of a giant Christ looking down.
The valley road runs up from El Pont de Suert through villages whose stone houses and slate roofs seem to grow out of the mountain. It is a good road, with tight bends, short climbs and spectacular views toward the peaks of the Aigüestortes National Park, which is a few kilometres away and has mountain lakes and granite crests. Traffic is light except in summer and at weekends, and the weather changes fast. Snow can close the roads in winter, and fog and thunderstorms are common in summer afternoons.
Practicalities need care. Castejón de Sos and Vielha are each over twenty kilometres away, and the valley villages are small, so do not assume fuel is available. Fill up in a larger town before you climb. Churches may be open only at set times, with guided tours or tickets from a central office in the valley, so check the schedule before arriving.
A bowl of hot soup or a plate of local sausage in a mountain bar is a pleasure after a cool morning.