La Seu d'Urgell

La Seu d'Urgell stands near the meeting of the Segre and Valira rivers, at a crossroads of routes through the Catalan Pyrenees. Its cathedral made it the seat of the bishop of Urgell. The new town became a centre of crafts and commerce; grain measures preserved beneath its main street date from 1379. Its walls enclosed the cathedral and episcopal palace as well as residential quarters. The Black Death struck the town in 1348, and later wars repeatedly affected its fortifications. In 1691 French troops occupied La Seu, and during the War of the Spanish Succession the town supported the Austrian claimant. In 1822 royalists established the Regency of Urgell here as a rival to Spain's liberal government, though their position proved short-lived.