Los Arcos

The high ground north of Los Arcos was already a Vasconic settlement from the late Bronze Age into the Iron Age, identified by some historians with the Roman-era place called Curnonium. The town's documented medieval life began formally in April 1176, when King Sancho VI of Navarre granted it its own fuero — a distinctive charter that combined frontier privileges with a layered fiscal system covering the three social groups living within the walls: Frankish settlers, minor nobles, and peasant farmers. Unusually for a Navarrese Camino town, it was never granted the standard Jaca charter, yet it became one of the six principal towns that formed the commons branch of the Navarrese parliament in the mid-thirteenth century.

The town changed hands repeatedly through war: Castilian troops damaged its castle in 1274, and from 1463 — following an arbitration ruling by Louis XI of France — Los Arcos passed to Castile, remaining under Castilian rule until 1753, when it rejoined Navarre. In 1521, during a Franco-Navarrese reconquest attempt, the town resisted briefly before being sacked.

Roman remains and the ruins of the medieval castle can still be seen. The main street, Calle Mayor, is lined with houses bearing noble coats of arms, and the town has two notable squares: Plaza de Santa María and Plaza de El Coso. Near the Puerta de Castilla stands the Puente del Lavadero, and the Puente de los Mecánicos crosses nearby. Other survivals include La Nevera de Los Arcos and the former Hospital de Santa Brígida, now replaced by a residential block. The Casa de la Villa del Coso, known as the Balcón de Toros, and the town hall — a 1764 manor-house-style building — face the Coso square.

The centrepiece is the church of Santa María, whose origins go back to a Romanesque building. Over the following centuries it absorbed Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, and Neoclassical additions, giving the interior — a single nave with lateral chapels set between buttresses — an unusually varied character. The north doorway is a plateresque portal from 1591, carved to resemble an altarpiece. The bell tower combines Gothic and Renaissance features. Against the south wall sits a flamboyant Gothic cloister whose delicately traced stone arches date from the same period. The town also has a convent of Concepcionistas and several hermitages: San Blas, Calvario, San Sebastián, San Lorenzo, and San Vicente.