Village
The Condado de Treviño is a municipality of around 1,470 inhabitants which, together with La Puebla de Arganzón, forms the Burgos enclave completely surrounded by Álava, 101 km from the city of Burgos; its relief is shaped by the valley of the río Ayuda, a tributary of the Zadorra, between the montes de Vitoria and the sierra de Cantabria. Its capital, Treviño, has been a historic-artistic ensemble since 1983 and was officially founded in 1161 by King Sancho VI of Navarre, the Wise; in 1200 it passed to Castile after Alfonso VIII's victory over Navarre. In the hamlet of Laño open the hermit caves of Las Gobas, inhabited by hermits more than fifteen hundred years ago, with animal carvings and inscriptions. Depopulation in the 20th century led in 1974 to the dissolution of several neighbourhood councils.
Monument
A 13th-century Gothic church whose Baroque tower characterises the whole village of Treviño. From its medieval construction it preserves the doorway, in late Romanesque style, with rich decoration in archivolts, capitals, jambs and intercolumniations; on the sixth archivolt the signs of the zodiac alternate with scenes of the agricultural tasks of each month. On the outside a 13th-century stone carving of the Virgen Blanca stands out. The tower was built in the 18th century: the bell chamber is by José de Ejalde (1774) and the dome and lantern by Juan Agustín de Echeverría (1790). Inside, on a Latin-cross plan, there is a Churrigueresque altarpiece of 1720, a 13th-century baptismal font, a Gothic Christ and two Renaissance processional crosses.
Monument
The ermita de la Purísima Concepción is a Romanesque church built in the late 12th century, situated on a small rise on the outskirts of San Vicentejo, a Burgos-province village belonging to the municipality of Condado de Treviño, beside the road from Treviño to Vitoria-Gasteiz. According to an inscription on its south façade, the church was originally dedicated to San Vicente and its construction is dated to around 1162. It is a single-nave building with two bays and a presbytery, about 18 by 10 metres, bearing the marks of at least two stonemasons' workshops: one, more skilled, worked the apse and the presbytery, with superimposed blind arcades and capitals of great decorative richness; the other completed the nave. Restored in 1963 by the Diputación de Álava after a serious state of ruin, it was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in 1994.
Monument
Thirteen artificial caves cut into the limestone rock beside Laño, inhabited by early medieval hermit communities; together with the neighboring group of Santorkaria they were declared a historic-artistic site on 23 June 1978.
Activity
A waymarked itinerary linking the two rock-cut complexes of Laño, thirteen cavities at Las Gobas and eighteen at Santorkaria, in the corner of the peninsula with the greatest concentration of excavated Visigothic-period hermitages.
Activity
A route linking the Romanesque churches and hermitages scattered through the enclave's villages, from the historiated doorway of Saraso to San Pedro de Aguillo and the hermitage of El Granado at Albaina, within barely a few kilometres of countryside.
Historical milestone
King Sancho VI of Navarre founded the town of Treviño in 1161 to secure the frontier; barely forty years later, in 1200, the territory passed into the hands of Alfonso VIII of Castile, the origin of the Burgos enclave that survives today.
Historical milestone
The enclave has voted twice on its integration into Álava: in 1940 98 per cent came out in favour and in the non-binding consultation of 1998 68 per cent did so, without either having had any administrative effect.
Curiosity
From the hamlet, uninhabited since 1936, the tower of the sixteenth-century church of San Miguel stands out, beside the hermitage of Burgondo and a medieval necropolis; its fame as a cursed village was born in the eighties and no document supports it.
Monument
A Romanesque hermitage beside Albaina, a settlement of medieval layout and fine architecture; in its surroundings and in neighbouring Laño is concentrated the peninsula's largest group of Visigothic-period rock-cut churches.
Monument
The church of the small hamlet of Saraso preserves a Romanesque doorway of especially rich iconographic content, one of the pieces that justify the nickname of Treviño Cappadocia applied to this corner of Burgos.
Nature
The Ayuda river, called Ihuda in Basque, rises in the Montes de Vitoria, near Oquina, and is a tributary of the Zadorra, which in turn flows into the Ebro. Its greatest beauty lies hidden in the gorge it carves from south to north between the villages of Oquina and Sáseta, with the typical appearance of a Cantabrian mountain river amid beech forests and varied woodland; the Rodavieja waterfall stands out within it. The canyon crosses the Condado de Treviño, enclosed within the province of Burgos and bordering Álava, before the river reaches a flatter area at Urarte, a Basque place name meaning 'between waters'. Rock-cut hermitages open into its walls, and birds of prey that hunt over the county's grain fields nest above them.
Nature
The hills in the southeast of the enclave link up with the Izki natural park, which holds Europe's largest continuous stand of Pyrenean oak; in autumn the oak wood turns the whole slope of the county ochre.