Discover the curiosities in the Aspres from village to village, from one chapel to another. The character of Romanesque art impregnates this area. The capital of the Aspres is Thuir, a very lively and colorful town steeped in tradition. Thuir has the biggest oak wine barrel in the world. Not far away is the village of Castelnou, a mediaeval village where artists and craftsmen live and work. The unforgettable Castelnou castle was commenced in the X century and completed in the XII century. The village was fortified in the XII and XIII centuries. If you go towards Saint-Michel de Llotes, you will discover the XI century pre-Romanesque church.
Aspres is renowned in Pyrenees Orientales for its dry, pungent and spiky vegetation. Limestone crystals sparkle here and there... The earth in the Aspres region is as warm and golden as honey. It probably explains why the bees are so at home there. Like the bees, the gorse and rose hip vegetation can also sting. It is the home of the olive tree, the cork-oak, the arbutus and almond trees, and has a myriad of former mule tracks which wind their way between the country farmhouses or ‘mas’ in Catalan, built of black slate, pinkish stone, and the red brick villages, home to the wine growers. In past times, the shepherds would leave the villages with their herds of sheep to find greener pastures near Thuir, in the plain, or the thinner pastures overlooking the Castelnou Castle. In the Aspres, a trickling course of water, under a stone or at the heart of a deep well can suddenly transform into a wild running current during a storm.