A Prehistoric Shelter Where Ice-Age Hunters Sheltered 300,000 Years Ago
You stand on a steep slope above Torroella de Montgri, facing a dark mouth of rock opening from the southern face of Santa Caterina hill. This is Cau del Duc—a rock shelter that has held human footprints since the Lower Paleolithic, when your ancestors huddled here to escape weather and predators, knapped stone tools, and roasted the horses and elephants they hunted across what is now the flat Baix Ter plain. The shelter's name comes from the eagle owl (duc in Catalan) that once nested in these cliffs. Today, the opening is visible from the town below, but reaching it means a real climb through scrub and stone—a walk that retraces routes people have taken for a quarter-million years.
What You See Inside the Rock Shelter
Cau del Duc is an open rock shelter, not a cave system—no caving gear needed, just steady legs and good light. You enter a natural alcove with a high ceiling, its floor strewn with loose stone and rubble. The excavations of 1922 by Lluís Pericot and Matías Pallarés uncovered about fifty stone tools and evidence of fire control; later work in the 1970s confirmed the site's Middle Pleistocene age. The animal bones they found tell of a landscape now vanished: horses (the dominant prey), elephant, rhinoceros, bear, and lynx. The shelter itself speaks through absence—the missing ceiling tells how weathering and collapse have reshaped it over millennia. From inside, looking out toward the Mediterranean coast and the Baix Ter plain, you see the view your predecessors saw, though they hunted in a colder, different world.
The Hike and the Best Times to Visit
The well-marked hiking trail from Torroella de Montgri to Cau del Duc is steep and rocky, with uneven footing that demands sturdy hiking shoes. Plan for a round trip of 1.5 to 2 hours, depending on fitness and pace. In spring and autumn, mild temperatures and clear air make the climb rewarding; you emerge to views across the plain toward the coast. Summer brings intense heat on the south-facing slope—if you go then, start early in the morning and bring plenty of water. Winter is quieter, though the exposed hillside offers little shelter from wind and rain. The site is often combined with a visit to Castell del Montgrí, the medieval castle on the peak above, which extends your day considerably. Local guides occasionally lead prehistory-focused walks that give deeper context to what you see.
Nearby in Torroella de Montgri
Once you descend from Cau del Duc, the town itself repays an hour or two. Walk to the Plaça de la Vila, where Gothic arcades surround an irregular square and a sixteenth-century town house displays the coat of arms on its windows; the Chapel of Sant Antoni, now a municipal exhibition hall, stands in the corner with its public clock. Sant Genís Church, begun in late Gothic style and built on an earlier temple, with construction of the current temple beginning in 1306 after a fire in 1285, was consecrated on May 3, 1609; inside is a baptismal font dated between 1341 and 1367. The Witch Tower (Torre de les Bruixes) and remaining city walls, fourteenth and fifteenth century, stand in the northwest; between them runs about twenty meters of the north wall, loopholed and still four meters high. You might also visit Museu de la Mediterrània, Museu Palau Solterra, or trek the short distances to Sant Andreu d'Ullà, Cau del Duc d'Ullà, and Torre Begura. From late July to mid-August, the Torroella de Montgri Music Festival brings classical performances and other music to venues around town.
Start your hike early, bring water, and wear good boots. The effort of climbing to Cau del Duc is rewarded not only by the view but by the knowledge that you are standing where people stood when mammoths still walked Europe.