Logbook · 4 places

What to see and do in Merindad de Sotoscueva

What to see and do in Merindad de Sotoscueva (Las Merindades, Burgos): 4 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 1 Nature · 1 Historical milestones

How far each place is from the centre of Merindad de Sotoscueva

Rock-cut hermitage of San Bernabé 3.2 km
Ojo Guareña 3.2 km

Towns near Merindad de Sotoscueva

Spain › Castile and León › Burgos › Las Merindades › Merindad de Sotoscueva

What to see and do in Merindad de Sotoscueva

Merindad de Sotoscueva
Village
Merindad de Sotoscueva is a municipality in the Las Merindades comarca, in the north-western quadrant of the province of Burgos, with its capital at Cornejo. It brings together around 400 inhabitants spread across twenty-five population centres, most of them minor local entities. It is already mentioned in the year 800, in the Carta de Repoblación Pressura of the Abbot of Taranco, and from 860 it came under the lordship of Count Rodrigo, integrated into the Condado de Castilla as a border area against Saracen incursions; it was one of the seven Merindades de Castilla Vieja, anciently divided into six districts. The municipality is famous for the karst complex of Ojo Guareña, a natural monument with more than 110 kilometres of galleries, the second most extensive in Spain and extremely rich in archaeological remains.
Rock-cut hermitage of San Bernabé
Monument
Carved into the rock at the mouth of the Ojo Guareña complex, it keeps wall paintings of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that recount the martyrdoms and miracles of San Tirso, a cycle unusual in a church bored into the limestone.
Ojo Guareña
Nature
Ojo Guareña is a karst complex in the province of Burgos formed by more than 110 kilometres of galleries, declared a Monumento Natural (Natural Monument) by the government of Castile and León on 14 March 1996. Its caves formed in carbonate materials from the Coniacian, and until the discovery of new galleries in the Mortillano system in 2009, it was considered the largest karst system on the Iberian Peninsula. Archaeological finds show it was used by humans from the Middle Palaeolithic to the Middle Ages, and more than 180 species of invertebrates have been catalogued within it. A visitor centre in Quintanilla del Rebollar offers insight into its history. The complex extends over 13,850 hectares and nearly four hundred cavities.
Donation of Count Gundesindo
Historical milestone
In 816 Count Gundesindo handed over lands of Sotoscueva to a monastery, sixteen years after a resettlement charter of the year 800 gave the first written notice of the valley, which in 860 entered the county of Castile.