Logbook · 7 places

What to see and do in Briviesca

What to see and do in Briviesca (La Bureba, Burgos): 7 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 2 Monuments · 1 Nature · 1 Curiosities · 1 Historical milestones · 1 Food and drink

Towns near Briviesca

Spain › Castile and León › Burgos › La Bureba › Briviesca

What to see and do in Briviesca

Briviesca
Village
Briviesca is the capital of La Bureba, in the north of the province of Burgos, heir to the Roman Virovesca and formerly the capital of the Autrigones. The passage of the Camino de Santiago, along the Bayonne route that linked up with the Aquitaine route, made it grow to its greatest splendour in the Renaissance. Today, midway between Miranda de Ebro and Burgos, it has 6,728 inhabitants. It preserves a monumental ensemble with several Bienes de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection): the collegiate church of Santa María la Mayor, the monastery of Santa Clara — with an altarpiece held to be one of the most important in Spain, commissioned in 1512 by Mencía de Velasco —, the church of San Martín and its Castilian plaza Mayor. It is also famous for its candied almonds.
The relocation of Briviesca by Blanca de Portugal
Historical milestone
The infanta Blanca of Portugal bought the town on 27 September 1305 and decided to bring it down from the hill to the plain with a deliberate layout of two axes crossing at the Plaza Mayor.
The grid layout that reached America
Curiosity
The orthogonal grid that earned the town the nickname of la bien trazada served as a model for the Catholic Monarchs when founding Santa Fe de Granada and, through it, for a good part of the cities founded in America.
The collegiate church of Santa María la Mayor
Monument
The former collegiate church of Santa María la Mayor of Briviesca, today reduced to the rank of parish church and closed to worship, was founded in the second decade of the 14th century by the infanta Blanche of Portugal, lady of the Monastery of Santa María la Real de las Huelgas and daughter of King Afonso III of Portugal, and was the first of the five collegiate churches of the diocese of Burgos. The building, an amalgam of styles in which the baroque and the neoclassical predominate today, was rebuilt between 1789 and 1794 with the surviving neoclassical facade of twin towers topped by a dome, designed by Manuel Echanove. Declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) with the rank of national historic-artistic monument in 1982, it is one of the oldest collegiate churches in Spain.
The walnut-wood altarpiece of Santa Clara
Monument
Carved between 1551 and 1569 in walnut wood and some twenty metres high, it is known as the Escorial of altarpieces. The convent was founded by the testamentary instruction of Mencía de Velasco, with the first stone in 1512.
The candied almonds of Briviesca
Food and drink
The almond coated in caramelised sugar is the sweet that has given fame to the capital of the Bureba: it is sold loose in the confectioners' shops of the old quarter and is an obligatory accompaniment to the fairs and festivals of the comarca.
The Bureba corridor, gateway to the Meseta
Nature
The plain narrows towards the east into a natural corridor that connects the basins of the Ebro and the Duero. Through it passed the prehistoric migrations, the Roman roads and later the Camino de Santiago.