Logbook · 5 places

What to see and do in Valle de Mena

What to see and do in Valle de Mena (Las Merindades, Burgos): 5 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 2 Monuments · 1 Curiosities · 1 Historical milestones

How far each place is from the centre of Valle de Mena

Towns near Valle de Mena

Spain › Castile and León › Burgos › Las Merindades › Valle de Mena

What to see and do in Valle de Mena

Valle de Mena
Village
Valle de Mena is a municipality of the province of Burgos, in Castile and León, part of the Las Merindades comarca, in the upper reaches of the Ordunte and Cadagua rivers, within the Montañas de Burgos; it is the northernmost municipality of the province and the closest to the Cantabrian coast, just 18 km away in a straight line. It has about 4,150 inhabitants, 40.85% of them in its seat, Villasana de Mena, and it gathers more than a hundred population centres, several of them abandoned. At Taranco, the document that first mentions Castile is dated to the year 800, and its territory, flanked by the mountains of La Peña and Ordunte, is thick with Romanesque churches, houses with balconies and manorial towers, among which those of Siones and Vallejo rank among the finest Romanesque work in the north.
Church of Santa María de Siones
Monument
One of the gems of Romanesque architecture in northern Burgos, in the Mena Valley hamlet of Siones, with historiated capitals and a chancel of great refinement, built when the valley was living its moment of greatest splendour. The construction, of ashlar masonry, dates from the late 12th century and its exact origin is unknown, though some authors attribute it to the Order of the Temple. It has a single nave, a tower over the crossing and an eastern apse divided into three sections by engaged columns, with three round-arched splayed windows. The interior, richer than the exterior as it is a work of the late Romanesque, preserves a double arcade of seven arches in the apse, whose capitals depict scenes of David and Goliath, of Adam and Eve, and of everyday life.
Church of San Lorenzo de Vallejo de Mena
Monument
A Romanesque church that shares stonework and workshop with the neighbouring one at Siones and that forms with it the most notable ensemble of the valley, dotted with one hundred and twenty-nine settlements spread over its slopes.
The document of Taranco de Mena
Historical milestone
A document dated to the year 800 and originating from Taranco de Mena, in the Valle de Mena, contains one of the earliest written mentions of Castile as a territory, which makes this valley the documentary cradle of the county.
Villasana de Mena and the indianos' houses
Curiosity
The medieval town of Villasana preserves its layout and its traditional architecture alongside eighteenth-century ironworks and the small palaces raised in the nineteenth by the indianos enriched on the other side of the Atlantic.