Hotels in Llafranc

Llafranc

Llafranc is a small seaside village on the Costa Brava, one of the three coastal villages of the municipality of Palafrugell in the Baix Empordà, with Calella de Palafrugell just to the south and Tamariu a few kilometres north. It sits around a sheltered sandy bay on a rocky coast, with a marina, a seafront promenade lined with terraces and many elegant 1930s villas. Only a few hundred people live here all year, while in high season the village welcomes some ten thousand visitors. Its history goes back a long way: a dolmen proves human presence four or five thousand years ago, and in Roman times Llafranc was a centre of wine and pottery production whose port shipped amphorae across the Mediterranean. Above the village rises the headland of Sant Sebastià de la Guarda, with the ruins of an Iberian settlement, a fifteenth-century watchtower, a hermitage and the Sant Sebastià lighthouse, the most powerful on the Catalan coast, and superb viewpoints. The GR 92 coastal path runs through the village, north towards Cala Pedrosa and Tamariu and south past the sixteenth-century Torre de Calella to Calella de Palafrugell. The Hotel Llafranc on the promenade was once popular with Salvador Dalí, Ernest Hemingway, Elizabeth Taylor and Sophia Loren, and the writer Tom Sharpe lived here. It suits couples and families who want a calm, stylish beach village with good restaurants and walks along the coast. Palafrugell is a few kilometres inland and Girona airport about 50 kilometres away by road.