Olite

Archaeological remains show that Roman settlement here included fortified high ground and surrounding rural villas, and, notably, dinosaur remains have also been found in the area. The first written record comes from the Visigoth period: Bishop Isidore of Seville recorded that King Suintila founded and fortified the town of Oligicus in 621 to defend against the Vascones. Medieval Olite grew quickly after 1147, when King García IV of Navarre granted it its first charter, giving the town its own jurisdiction, farmland, and fiscal privileges.

By the late Middle Ages it had become one of the favoured seats of the Navarrese royal court. King Carlos III began transforming the existing palace into a permanent royal residence, and in 1407 made Olite the capital of its own merindad. After Castile took control in 1512, the town gradually lost political weight and population.

The title of city was granted by Philip IV in 1630. One later point of note: Olite's first agricultural cooperative was the first in Navarre and the third founded anywhere in Spain.

Olite's oldest surviving church began as a Romanesque building, moved through Cistercian Gothic, and was later extended in the Baroque period. Its Romanesque doorway and cloister are the highlights, alongside a 54-metre Gothic spire known as the Alta Torre. The tower's base reuses large ashlar blocks from a Roman structure; its upper section dates from 1918.

A rose window was added in 1998, made by local glass artist Alberto Chueca. A second Gothic church, with a Renaissance altarpiece by Pedro de Aponte, was largely complete by 1300, with an atrium added around 1432. Outside the walls stands a convent that was rebuilt between 1607 and 1612, with further works in 1718.

Since 1804 it has housed a community of Poor Clares who originally came from a Pamplona monastery demolished for military reasons during the War of the Convention. The façade carries an alabaster shield of Navarre-Évreux above the entrance. The centrepiece of the town is the Royal Palace of the Kings of Navarre, commonly called a castle, though its character is courtly rather than military.

Carlos III built on an earlier defensive structure, creating a complex of halls, gardens, moats, high walls, and towers that accumulated over many decades rather than following a single plan. Part of the complex now operates as the Parador de Turismo Príncipe de Viana.