Day trips from Pamplona

Capital of Navarra and one of the great cities on the Camino de Santiago, Pamplona carries 75,000 years of human settlement within its medieval walls, Roman foundations, and Gothic cathedral.

Where the French and Aragonese routes of the Camino de Santiago have merged into one since medieval times, Puente la Reina is defined by its six-arch Romanesque bridge over the Arga river, still carrying pilgrims toward Santiago as it has for nearly a thousand years.

Artajona rises above the Navarrese plain behind medieval walls that enclose a Gothic church, a stone-arched fountain, and dolmens that predate any city in Spain.

A royal Navarrese town on the Camino de Santiago, built across the river Ega in distinct medieval quarters, its Romanesque churches still standing where pilgrims and Frankish settlers once moved through the same streets.

A Navarrese valley town on the Bidasoa river, where a baroque church tower still carries the old castle's arrow slits and a disused narrow-gauge railway has become a 44-kilometre greenway along the water.

The royal palace of the Kings of Navarre rises above Olite's walled medieval streets, its towers and gardens once counted among the finest in Europe.

A royal frontier town on the Camino de Santiago in Navarra, where medieval palaces line every street and one of the most complex Romanesque church facades in Spain stops travellers in their tracks.

A fortified Romanesque church crowns this hilltop village in Navarra, its battlemented towers and three ancient apses watching over the plains of the Ribera below.

An abandoned medieval village in Navarra, its castle ruins and fragmentary walls standing silent inside a private estate since the last residents left in the 1950s.

Birthplace of Ferdinand II of Aragon, this hilltop fortress town in Zaragoza province still wears its medieval skin — castle, walls, Romanesque crypt and Renaissance palaces stacked up the same rocky outcrop they have occupied for a thousand years.

A fortified Navarrese town on the Camino de Santiago whose church of Santa María layers Romanesque origins beneath Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque additions accumulated over six centuries.

Founded by Alfonso X in 1256 on a hilltop that has seen Roman roads, medieval walls, and the Camino de Santiago pass through it, Salvatierra carries five thousand years of history within its fortified streets in the Basque province of Álava.

A fortified medieval town on the Bidasoa river in Gipuzkoa, its intact walls, Gothic-baroque church, and Carlos V castle standing where Castile and France have faced each other across the water for eight centuries.

A Basque fishing town on the Coastal Camino de Santiago where pilgrims have crossed the Oria river by boat since medieval times, and whose rowing club holds more victories in the great San Sebastián regatta than any other.

A fortified Aragonese town set on a rocky outcrop above two rivers, its six Romanesque churches, castle, and medieval street plan standing largely unchanged since the twelfth century.

A fortified Navarran town where Roman and Celtic layers lie beneath Gothic church towers, and where César Borgia himself is buried beneath the western portal of the main church.

A Pyrenean stone village in Huesca, Aragón, where narrow medieval passageways thread between ancient houses and bears still roam the surrounding mountains.

A Basque coastal town on the Camino del Norte, where stone-coated manor houses, a Gothic military tower, and a still-active archaeological site spanning the Iron Age to the Middle Ages line its old streets above the Bay of Biscay.

A Basque fishing town on the Gipuzkoa coast, birthplace of the first man to circumnavigate the globe and home to a Gothic church that doubles as a tunnel to the harbour below.

A mountain valley town in Huesca where the Crown of Aragon was born, the river Aragón Subordán runs past megalithic monuments and a surviving Romanesque monastery church that once housed 150 monks.

A Basque town founded by the Lord of Vizcaya in 1356, its medieval streets lined with more than twenty palaces and sixty-nine heraldic shields — the stone-built legacy of families who traded with the New World.

A walled hilltop town in Álava's Basque Country, its medieval streets and fortified walls rising above one of Spain's oldest pre-Roman Celtic settlements.

Tudela stands on the Ebro in Navarra, its ancient hilltop core layered with Celtiberian, Roman, Moorish, and medieval Christian history, crowned by a Romanesque cathedral that took centuries to complete.

The Basque Country's inland capital, Vitoria-Gasteiz holds two cathedrals, a Gothic old quarter built on a hill with medieval walls, and a place on the UNESCO-recognised Camino de Santiago routes.

A La Rioja hilltop town with medieval walls, a baroque church, and the ruins of a pilgrim hospital still visible from the Camino de Santiago as it passes through.

An enclave of Burgos province surrounded entirely by the Basque Country, Condado de Treviño carries a territorial oddity rooted in medieval law, with Romanesque hermitages, cave dwellings, and ancient oak forests scattered across its comarca.

The first Romanesque cathedral in Spain, a complete Renaissance citadel, and a position astride the Camino de Santiago at the foot of the Pyrenean pass of Somport make Jaca one of Aragón's most historically layered towns.

A Navarrese border stronghold above the Ebro, its walled hilltop enclosure, ruined castle, and La Rioja's finest Romanesque hermitage marking seven centuries of contested frontier history.

A small walled town on the border of old Castile and Navarre, its medieval street plan still contained within the original walls above the river Zadorra.

A fortified hill town in Soria whose medieval gates, castle, and stone streets once made it powerful enough to appear in Don Quixote — and whose monuments earned it a place among Spain's most beautiful villages.

A former royal capital of medieval Navarre, Nájera rises above the Río Najerilla in La Rioja with a cave-born monastery that became the burial place of kings and a key stop on the Camino de Santiago.

A hilltop town in La Rioja whose name traces back to an ancient pre-Roman tribe, its streets shaped by centuries of conflict between the kingdoms of Castile and Navarre.

A city of layered stone and brick in Zaragoza province, where a Gothic-Mudéjar cathedral, a Renaissance bishop's palace and a tightly packed medieval quarter earn it the old nickname of "the Aragonese Toledo."

The wine capital of La Rioja sits above the Ebro river with a fortified old town, medieval gateways, and a cluster of Renaissance palaces that trace seven centuries of Castilian lordship.

A river-crossing town on the Ebro in Burgos province, where a medieval castle, an 18th-century stone bridge, and converging rail lines mark two thousand years of strategic importance.

A La Rioja town whose very name traces back to a queen's residence, with a Dominican convent consecrated by a pope and a history stretching from Roman roads to the Wars of Castile.

A frontier town on the edge of Castilla y León, Ágreda carries layers of Celtiberian, Arab, Jewish and Christian history within walls that still stand, watched over by a monastery whose founder claimed to have crossed continents without leaving her cell.

An ancient Celtiberian mint town on the Aragonese plains, its castle hill, cave wine cellars, and mud-brick collegiate church carrying layers of Roman, Moorish, and medieval history.

A walled city on the ancient wool road from Castile to the sea, Orduña stands in Bizkaia as a strategic mountain gateway whose commercial and defensive past is written into every stone of its historic centre.

A cathedral city on the Camino de Santiago in La Rioja, built around the legacy of a medieval saint whose 69-metre freestanding baroque tower is the tallest in the region and visible for miles.

A high Pyrenean spa resort at 1,630 metres in the Valle de Tena, reached by a narrow mountain road that once carried shepherds and smugglers over the passes into France.

A walled Castilian town in Burgos province, its medieval gates, castle, Romanesque hermitage, and monastery declared protected monuments, standing along an old road to Bilbao.

A La Rioja mountain town shaped by Basque roots, medieval wool-making, and an 18th-century royal textile factory that tripled its population and left behind monuments still standing in its centre today.

A Basque port town on the Nervión estuary, home to the world's oldest transporter bridge and a medieval old quarter whose commercial history stretches back to the wool and iron trades of the Middle Ages.

A medieval hill town in Álava where a perfectly preserved three-street layout, a parish church, a sanctuary, and fragments of old walls tell a story stretching from prehistoric caves to the counts of Ayala.

A mountain town in the Aragonese Pyrenees, sitting at 891 metres where the Ara river runs through the broad Valle de Broto, with the high peaks of Sobrarbe rising to over 2,000 metres on every side.

A village in the Zaragoza hills where a collegiate church blends Romanesque, Mudéjar, and Renaissance in a single building, and the ruins of an old castle watch over the surrounding countryside.

A medieval trading town on the Camino de Santiago in Bizkaia, where a Romanesque-Gothic bridge still spans the Cadagua river beside a walled centre that has anchored this corner of the Basque Country since 1199.

Perched on a rock above the Ebro river in Burgos province, Frías crowns its crag with a medieval castle, two surviving town gates, and streets of timber-framed houses that still hang from the cliff face.

Capital of its Castilian province, Soria stands above the Duero river with a skyline of Romanesque towers, a Templar monastery, and a castle hill that has been occupied since the Iron Age.

A small Burgos town that once sat on the front line between Franco's Nationalist territory and the Republican regions of Cantabria and the Basque Country.

A town on the Jalón river in Zaragoza province where Celtiberian foundations, a Muslim-built castle, and a grand baroque church mark out more than two thousand years of continuous occupation.

A medieval town in Burgos whose grid of streets, laid out by a Portuguese princess in 1305, became the model for the Spanish grid cities of the Americas — and whose monastery church holds what locals call the Escorial of altarpieces.

A small Aragonese town in Zaragoza province, Mesones de Isuela holds a castle and a parish church dedicated to the Assumption within its municipal boundaries.

Birthplace of the controversial Pope Benedict XIII and seat of one of Aragón's great noble dynasties, Illueca rises above the Jalón valley with a castle-palace that spans mudéjar, Renaissance and baroque in a single building.

A seafront town in Cantabria where a Gothic castle overlooks the harbour, backed by cave paintings, Roman ruins, and a medieval history as Castile's first maritime town.

A Castilian hill town in Burgos shaped by a thousand years of monastery, medieval charter, and royal burial, where a great Benedictine abbey still anchors streets that once drew counts, kings, and a thriving Jewish community.

A castle of Arab and Lombard origins crowns a hillside above the Ara river valley in the Aragonese Pyrenees, with one of the largest churches in the range rising below it in the old town.