Iberian Town of Ullastret
Historic siteIn 2012, archaeologists digging through a street in Ullastret uncovered something nobody expected from a 2,500-year-old trading town: fifteen human skull fragments, several of them still pierced by the iron nails that had once fixed them on public display. This was the largest Iberian city in Catalonia — and its people practised a ritual of displaying enemies’ severed heads as war trophies.
Trophy heads, nailed to public view
The 2012 discovery, made during excavation of a street running through the settlement, turned up skull fragments bearing unmistakable puncture marks — two of them still embedded with the nails used to fix them in place. Ancient Greek and Roman writers, including Posidonius of Apamea and Diodorus Siculus, had already described this exact practice among Celtic and Iberian peoples: the head of a defeated enemy leader, preserved and displayed as a public trophy, a warning and a boast rolled into one. Ullastret’s find gave archaeologists physical proof of something previously known only from classical text — carried out, in this case, not by a distant enemy but by the town’s own residents, in the middle of their own street.
A city built to dominate the landscape
Long before that discovery, Ullastret was already known as the largest Iberian settlement ever found in Catalonia — the fortified capital of the Indigetes, a confederation of tribes controlling territory across what is now the Girona coastline. Perched on the hill of Puig de Sant Andreu, the town was enclosed by roughly 930 metres of defensive wall reinforced with circular towers — the oldest and largest surviving Iberian wall in Catalonia — and its interior held two religious temples, more than 200 grain storage pits, and cisterns for collecting drinking water. It was never a village playing at being a city. Archaeologists studying the layout describe genuine urban planning: streets, defined districts, and infrastructure built to support a population living off agriculture, livestock, mining and quarrying on a serious scale.
Partners with the Greeks
Ullastret ran an active trading relationship with the nearby Greek colony of Empúries, exporting local goods and importing foreign pottery and manufactured products.
Tripled in size
Founded around the 7th century BC in wood and mud, the settlement was rebuilt in stone from the 6th century BC and had tripled its walled area by the 4th century BC.
Abandoned, not destroyed
Despite pressure from expanding Roman control during the Second Punic War, the town appears to have been abandoned peacefully in the 2nd century BC rather than razed.
On-site since 1961
A museum atop the same hill, open since 1961, displays finds across three rooms covering trade and religion, architecture, and daily Iberian life.
What survives to walk through today
Only the Puig de Sant Andreu section of the wider Ullastret complex — which also includes a second settlement at Illa d’en Reixac and a nearby necropolis — is open to visitors, representing the town’s final phase of occupation in the 3rd century BC. The route follows the fortification wall past its reinforcing towers, through the excavated street plan, and past the foundations of the temples and storage pits that once fed the population. An immersive room at the site’s museum offers a virtual reconstruction of the town as it would have looked at its height, filling in what the bare stone foundations leave to the imagination.
Frequently asked questions
Is Ullastret really the largest Iberian site in Catalonia?
Yes — it is widely recognised as the largest Iberian settlement discovered in the region to date, both in physical scale and in the volume of artefacts recovered.
What was found in the 2012 excavation?
Fifteen human skull fragments, including two still pierced by the nails used to display them publicly — physical evidence of a known Celtic-Iberian practice of displaying defeated enemies’ heads as war trophies.
Who lived in Ullastret?
The Indigetes, an Iberian tribal confederation that controlled territory across the modern Girona coastline, with Ullastret serving as their capital.
Why was the town abandoned?
It was abandoned in the 2nd century BC amid expanding Roman control of the region, apparently without violent destruction of the site itself.
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How this page is maintained. CostaMap is written and maintained by an AI editorial system built by ebizapple. Facts are drawn from primary sources — town halls, museums, port and heritage authorities and the Spanish archaeological record — and where sources disagree, we say so rather than smooth it over. Photographs marked as ours are taken on location. This page was last reviewed on 10 August 2026. Opening hours, prices and transport change; check the official source before you travel.