Estella

The site that became Estella has a long prehistory. A settlement called Lizarra, on the slopes of the hill of Puy, is first recorded in 958, serving as a frontier outpost against Muslim territory. King Sancho Garcés I is said to have reconquered it around 914, and it functioned as a fortified lord's village with a castle and a church of San Pedro, governed by a royal representative and tasked with defending the border.

By 1076, a new settlement had grown at the foot of Lizarra's castle, and within a year it appears in documents as Stella — Estella. Its population was mixed, with a significant Frankish community from southern France. King Sancho Ramírez granted the town a charter between 1076 and 1084, confirming property rights, free trade, and its own council.

The town then grew quarter by quarter across the river: the Frankish barrio of San Pedro de la Rúa was followed by San Miguel, then San Salvador del Arenal, then San Juan. By 1187–1188 the king had extended the original charter to cover the newer districts. Population decline in later centuries reduced four quarters to three — San Pedro de la Rúa, San Miguel, and San Juan — which together formed the Estella that has come down to the present.

Estella's churches span several centuries and styles. The church of San Pedro de la Rúa, already known by that name in the medieval period, has a facade from the mid-Romanesque period with close parallels to nearby churches at Cirauqui and Puente la Reina. Its interior layers run from the late twelfth century through to the baroque: the chapel of San Andrés, patron of the city, was built from 1706 in baroque forms, while its rococó altarpiece dates from the late eighteenth century.

The church of the Holy Sepulchre, on the old pilgrims' street now called Calle de Curtidores, shows a construction history stretching from around 1200 to the fifteenth century. Its Gothic portal is a notable feature.

The monastery church dating from between 1187 and 1196 retains a five-apse Romanesque chevet, with the three naves remodelled in Gothic forms in the first half of the fourteenth century. Its altarpiece of Santa Elena is among the key artworks inside.

Also worth noting: a single-nave Romanesque church built over an abandoned synagogue at the foot of the old castle of Zalatambor, today serving as an interpretation centre for Romanesque art and the Camino de Santiago. And the basilica of the Virgen del Puy, rebuilt to a star-shaped plan finished in 1951, houses a silver-plated seated image of the city's patron, dateable to the medieval period.