Castellón de la Plana
— — an octagonal bell tower against a flat Mediterranean sky.
Not only on a wall.
“The provincial capital of Castellón sits four kilometres inland from the Mediterranean, on the flat plain the Valencians call La Plana. At the centre of the old town stands El Fadrí, an octagonal bell tower of pale stone begun in 1591, standing apart from the concatedral beside it. Orange groves push up to the edges of the city. The port of El Grao runs east to the sea; the magdalena pilgrimage walks west toward the old hilltop site every spring. — from the studio
Castellón de la Plana, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Castellón de la Plana (Valencian: Castelló de la Plana) is the capital of Castellón province in the Valencian Community on Spain's eastern Mediterranean coast. The city sits on the coastal plain known as La Plana, about four kilometres inland from its own seaside district of El Grau. The municipality has a population of roughly 170,000, making it the fourth-largest city in the Valencian Community after Valencia, Alicante, and Elche. It lies about 65 kilometres north of Valencia along the AP-7 motorway and the Mediterranean rail corridor.
The Plaça Major holds the city's two civic anchors: the Concatedral de Santa María, a Gothic foundation rebuilt in the 20th century after Civil War damage, and El Fadrí, the freestanding octagonal bell tower begun in 1591 and finished in 1604 to a design by Damià Méndez. The tower stands roughly 58 metres tall and is unusual in the region for being detached from its cathedral. Nearby, the Lonja del Cáñamo and the 18th-century Ayuntamiento close the civic square. The streets around it preserve the orthogonal grid laid out when the town was moved down from its original hilltop site in 1251.
The Festes de la Magdalena, declared a Fiesta of International Tourist Interest in 2010, run for nine days starting on the third Saturday of Lent. They commemorate the 1251 descent of the population from the hilltop Castell Vell to the plain below. The Romeria de les Canyes pilgrimage walks from the city to the old hilltop hermitage on the first Sunday of the festival. Floats, gegants, and the nightly mascletà fireworks fill the streets. Outside festival weeks, the orange harvest of the Plana runs from late November through March.