Banyoles, water and stone

The town of Banyoles, in the Spanish region of Girona, has one of the area's most emblematic heritage architectural and urban centres. The monks of Sant Esteve Monastery, who established the first settlement there in the ninth century, also built a system of drainage canals, or recs, excavated from the lacustrine travertine plate beneath the town, to provide water from Banyoles's lake and to avoid the frequent localised flooding. These canals were later covered.