Church located at the end of the Bac Grillera mountain range which, due to its location, enjoys extraordinary views over the Empordà and the Gulf of Roses. It can be reached from Maçanet de Cabrenys, Tapis or, more easily, from the Costoja road. It is recommended to complete the route by going up to the Bac Grillera castle.
For many years the chapel of the Fau in the area of Albanyà has been largely forgotten in guides and monographs and has almost only appeared in glimpses in works of architectural heritage or cartography and that its cropped image is visible from far away. But the people of the towns of Albanyà, Maçanet; Sant Llorenç de La Muga; Costoja and Sant Llorenç de Cerdans, due to their proximity, devotion or tradition, keep beautiful memories.
The Fau chapel is a nave with a semicircular apse. The nave was greatly reformed and extended in the 17th-18th centuries. The Romanesque apse is the only thing preserved from the primitive church of the 14th century, with a roof made of slate slabs from the country, without any windows, only a small square opening for ventilation.
A few meters from the chapel on the south side is the hermit's house and inn with all the collapsed roofs. It consists of three bodies, the two in the southern part are the oldest and were the hermit's house. What remains closest to the chapel was the inn, there are the rooms, the kitchen and the dining room; and in the lower part the corral, the courts and the cellar; below the house there are three beams with dry wall of this farmhouse and it was supplied with water from a cistern close to the walls. There is also a modern utility room attached to the south wall. The house was inhabited until the middle of the 19th century. Work is now underway to adapt it as a mountain refuge.
The Virge del Fau was also known as the Marsededéu de les Formigues or Alades, because on the day of her festival, September 8, thousands of winged ants go to die there. It is said that the phenomenon began at the beginning of the mass and increased considerably at the end of the service when the pavement and the surroundings of the chapel were covered with these small insects. It is said that attracted by the lights, the smell of the candles, the incense or the agglomeration of people, they rushed into the small temple, seeking death by suffocation, at the feet of the Virgin. The people of the village attributed it to a prodigy and some said that they came out of a hole on the Gesos side, called "the cistern hole"; and others that came from the tops of the nearby mountains. Carles Bosch de la Trinxeria, who knew these mountains very well, included the legend they had told him in his novel Lena (1894).
Translated by Google •
In the know? Log-in to add a tip for other adventurers!