Andorra: Nine Attractions and Natural Wonders

A country that is almost all mountain

Andorra is a 468-square-kilometre country wedged in the eastern Pyrenees between France and Spain, ruled jointly — in a arrangement dating to 1278 — by the president of France and a Spanish bishop. Almost none of it is flat. Most visitors come for two things: duty-free shopping in the capital, and skiing across the linked resorts of Grandvalira and Vallnord, which together make the biggest ski area in the Pyrenees.

But there is more to it than tills and chairlifts. The nine places below are the churches, valleys, and villages that show the older Andorra — the one that was one of the poorest corners of Europe until the 1950s. Summer is superb for walking; winter is the ski season.

1. The Madriu-Perafita-Claror Valley

This U-shaped glacial valley in the southeast is Andorra's only UNESCO World Heritage Site, listed as a cultural landscape: a place shaped over centuries by mountain farming, with summer pastures, dry-stone shepherds' huts, iron-working sites, and pack trails, and no road anywhere in it.

You reach it on foot, most easily by the steep path up from Escaldes-Engordany. Day walkers go in for the waterfalls and the stone bordes; long-distance hikers cross it on the GR routes and stay in the refuges. It is the best answer to anyone who thinks Andorra is only shopping malls.

2. Casa de la Vall, Andorra la Vella

Casa de la Vall is a 16th-century stone manor house that served for three centuries as Andorra's parliament, courtroom, and prison all at once. Inside is the "Cabinet of the Seven Keys," an iron chest holding the country's founding documents, which could only be opened when a representative of each of the seven parishes was present with their key.

It sits in the small medieval core of the capital, a short walk from the duty-free shopping streets. Guided visits take in the chamber, the old kitchen, and the courtroom; the modern parliament now meets in a glass building next door.

3. The Church of Santa Coloma

Just south of the capital, Santa Coloma is Andorra's oldest church, with a nave that may go back to the 8th or 9th century and a distinctive circular bell tower added around 1200. Its Romanesque wall paintings were removed in the 20th century and sold; some have since been returned and are projected back onto the walls in a sound-and-light presentation.

It is a good first stop for the country's real signature: dozens of small Romanesque churches, built by mountain villages between the 9th and 13th centuries, scattered through the valleys.

4. Sant Joan de Caselles

Standing alone on a shelf of pasture near Canillo, in the north of the country, Sant Joan de Caselles is the church people picture when they think of Romanesque Andorra: a plain nave, a three-storey square bell tower, and a wooden porch, all in grey stone against the mountains.

Inside is a rare survival — a 12th-century painted and stucco image of the Crucifixion on the apse wall, with the wall paintings around it. It is usually open in the tourist season with a small admission.

5. Vall d'Incles

Vall d'Incles is the easiest beautiful place to reach in Andorra: a flat-bottomed green valley with a clear stream, grazing horses, and pine slopes rising sharply on both sides. In summer the road in is closed to private cars and a shuttle bus runs, which keeps it calm.

From the valley head, trails climb to a string of glacial tarns — the Estanys de Juclar, the largest lakes in the country — making it the standard starting point for a day in the high mountains.

6. The high lakes and the Tristaina cirque

Andorra's ridges are dotted with small glacial lakes, and reaching them is the main summer walking objective. The best-known cluster is the Estanys de Tristaina, three lakes in a rock cirque at the top of the Ordino-Arcalís valley, linked by an easy two-to-three-hour circuit that starts high enough to feel alpine straight away.

Others — the Juclar lakes above Incles, the Pessons lakes on the Grandvalira side — take longer but follow the same pattern: a marked trail, a hard climb, and a sheet of cold water under bare peaks.

7. Caldea and the hot springs of Escaldes

The town of Escaldes-Engordany, now more or less joined to the capital, is built over hot springs — escaldes means "scaldings" — and Caldea puts them to use in a large modern spa under a landmark glass spire, with indoor and outdoor pools, lagoons, and steam rooms looking out at the mountains.

It is the obvious thing to do on a bad-weather day or after a long walk, and its scale (it bills itself as one of the largest spas in southern Europe) makes it a sight in its own right.

8. The village of Ordino

Ordino, in the north, is the parish that kept its character: a small centre of stone houses and cobbled lanes around the church, with two grand old family mansions — Casa d'Areny-Plandolit and Casa Rossell — open as museums of how the country's few well-off families lived when everyone else was scraping by.

The whole Ordino parish was named a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 2020. It is also the road head for the Tristaina lakes, the Sorteny nature park, and the Ordino-Arcalís ski slopes.

9. The Pont de la Margineda

On the southern edge of the built-up valley, near Santa Coloma, the Margineda bridge carries an old cobbled track over the Valira river in a single high stone arch, 33 metres across. It was built in the 14th or 15th century and was for centuries the main crossing on the route between the parishes.

It takes ten minutes to see, but it is a good reminder of how recent Andorra's prosperity is: within living memory this was a hard, isolated place, and packhorse bridges like this were the infrastructure.

Andorra is small enough to base yourself in one place — the capital, Encamp, or Ordino — and reach everything by bus or a short drive. Give it two or three days and it turns out to have a good deal more than its reputation suggests.