Cardona

Cardona (perhaps the anc. Udura), a town of north-eastern Spain, in the province of Barcelona; about 55 m. N.W. of Barcelona, on a hill almost surrounded by the river Cardoner, a branch of the Llobregat. Pop. (1900) 3855. Cardona is a picturesque and old-fashioned town, with Moorish walls and citadel, and a 14th-century church. It is celebrated for the extensive deposit of rock salt in its vicinity. The salt forms a mountain mass about 300 ft. high and 3 m. in circumference, covered by a thick bed of a reddish-brown clay, and apparently resting on a yellowish-grey sandstone. It is generally more or less translucent, and large masses of it are quite transparent. The hill is worked like a mine; pieces cut from it are carved by artists in Cardona into images, crucifixes and many articles of an ornamental kind.