Vineyards are a constant feature of its landscape, with a predominance of small and medium-sized farms. Most of the local wineries make their wine from their own vines, taking on responsibility for the whole wine-making process. The Tourism Promotion Consortium of Alt Penedès has published a brochure with six different routes to encourage and facilitate visits.

In Vilafranca del Penedès, capital of Alt Penedès, the present and future of its wine production are closely bound up with the Control Board of the Official Designation of Origin and the Catalan Vine and Wine Institute (Instituto Catalán de la Viña y el Vino: INCAVI), the body that controls and promotes the quality wine of Catalunya. Its history, meanwhile, is dealt with in the Museo de Vilafranca, occupying a twelfth-century building, formerly the palace of the Condes de Barcelona and the Kings of Aragon, on Plaza de Jaume I. The museum exhibits various collections of archaeology, ornithology, geology and art of the whole district, although it is the wine section that is most widely known. The Museo del Vino is laid out in eleven rooms allowing visitors to follow the development of wine producing techniques and history. One of the exhibition’s great attractions is the perfect reproduction of a nineteenth-century tavern where visitors can taste wines of the Designation of Origin scheme, renewed every two weeks.

The most important sights to see in Vilafranca del Penedès are clustered around the Basílica de Santa Maria, the city’s prime building. It is a Gothic construction with a fifteenth-century crypt containing the Sant Enterrament, a marble sculpture carved by the Modernist sculptor Josep Llimona. The most interesting spots are the Palau Baltà, from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries; the Plaza de la Vila, dominated by the Modernist façade of the Town Hall; the Capilla de Sant Joan and the Iglesia de Sant Francesc, with an outstanding Gothic altarpiece.

The town’s Fiesta Mayor has been officially listed as a festival of National Interest for its preservation of folklore and its cultural richness. It traditionally starts at 12 midday on 29 August. The red letter day is 30 August, Sant Félix Day, when troupes of local experts vie with each other to form human castles, towers and pillars in front of the monument to their activity, the Castellers.