Castellet de Banyoles (Tivissa)
Considered one of the most important Iberian settlement of Catalonia, it was found the «Treasure of Tivissa», a unique collection of silver Iberian votive offerings.
Castellet de Banyoles is located at a strategic control point on the River Ebro from where it dominates the area known as the Móra Basin. (Cubeta de Móra). An Iberian settlement of approximately 4.4 hectares and a small mediaeval castle were built there. The site is found on the left side of the river. The vertical walls of the river valley and the banyoles and Molló gulleys allow only one point of access to this peninsula from the east.
It is not certain when the Iberian settlement was built, but pottery shards found here suggest the 4th century BC, although it is quite probable that it existed in thr 6th century BC, or even earlier. The location is within the area attribued by classical writers to the tribe of the ilercavones. It would have been a place from which to control the trade between the coast and the interior along the River Ebre, where Greek and Phoenician colonizers sailed in search of cereals, wood and metals. The arrival of the Romans appears to have been the cause of the sudden abandonment of the settlement towards the end of the 3rd century BC. There appears to have been some kind of occupations, probably residual, during the 2nd century BC.
The Iberian settlement of Castellet de Banyoles was discovered accidentally when, in 1912, a collection of earrings, bracalets, rings, mirror handles and a small hoard of twenty-nine coins was found. Later, in 1925, a pair of bronze oxen was found during plughing. But it was in 1927 that the most important find was made, and it was then that it was decided to excavate the settlement. This find, known as Treasure of Tivissa. In 1937 Brull and Serra Ràfols excavated and uncovered a good part of two pentagonal towers located on the isthmus of the peninsular platform. The excavations continued during the nineteen-forties, finding a series of structures adjacent to the southern tower. It is a group of rooms which would been part of a quarter of the village. A street running in a north-south direction would have separated two groups of houses or quarters.
Castellet de Banyoles forms part of the Iberian Route
