Molitg-les-Bains

Molitg-les-Bains in the Conflent district of the Pyrénées-Orientales, accessible via the famous Petit Train Jaune mountain railway that winds through the Catalan Pyrenees between Villefranche-de-Conflent and Font Romeu, draws from oligomineral sulphurous springs in a dramatic gorge setting below the medieval fortified town of Prades, the Catalan cultural capital of the French Pyrenees where the cellist Pablo Casals established his exile festival in the 1950s to protest the Franco dictatorship. The sulphur-rich spring water belongs to a long thermal tradition associated with the comfort and softness of the skin, at an establishment in a valley setting of considerable natural drama, where the Gorges de la Castellane frame the spa buildings in a landscape of limestone cliffs and Catalan riverside vegetation. The combination of Catalan cultural heritage, dramatic gorge scenery, the extraordinary Romanesque architecture of the Conflent valley including the fortified town of Villefranche-de-Conflent designed by Vauban, and a genuine thermal heritage makes Molitg one of the most culturally rich French Pyrenean thermal destinations.