Logbook · 7 places

What to see and do in Castrojeriz

What to see and do in Castrojeriz (Odra-Pisuerga, Burgos): 7 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

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

How far each place is from the centre of Castrojeriz

The collegiate church of Nuestra Señora del Manzano 1.1 km

Towns near Castrojeriz

Spain › Castile and León › Burgos › Odra-Pisuerga › Castrojeriz

What to see and do in Castrojeriz

Castrojeriz
Village
Castrojeriz is a town of 794 inhabitants that stretches along the Odra river, shortly before its confluence with the Pisuerga, in the Burgos comarca of Odra-Pisuerga. Its single street, laid at the foot of the hill crowned by the ruined castle —founded in the late 9th century by Count Muño to defend against the Arabs—, is the longest stretch of the entire Way of Saint James, at more than 1,500 meters. In the year 974 it received from García Fernández the first fuero granted in Castile. In 1359 Queen Eleanor of Castile was murdered there on the orders of Peter I. It preserves a wayside cross topped with a TAU, a reminder of the Antonines, who had a monastery and hospital outside the walls, and the church of Santa María, with three naves, linked to the Templars and the Antonines.
The collegiate church of Nuestra Señora del Manzano
Monument
The collegiate church of Santa María del Manzano began to be built in 1214 at the wish of Queen Berenguela of Castile, daughter of Alfonso VIII and mother of Ferdinand III the Saint, and combines 13th-century proto-Gothic fabric with reforms from the 15th and 18th centuries. It stands at the foot of the hill on which the castle of Castrojeriz rises, on a stretch of the Way of St James that Unesco included in 2015 in the extension of the World Heritage listing of the Camino route. It was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) on 25 April 1974, and today houses a museum of sacred art with medieval sculpture, a Flemish panel and gold and silverwork.
The ruins of the convent of San Antón
Monument
Alfonso VII founded this pilgrims' hospital, run by the Antonine monks, around 1146. Of the temple, built between the 13th century and the beginning of the 14th, the arches remain, under which the Camino Francés still passes. Located next to Villaquirán de la Puebla, two kilometres from Castrojeriz, the so-called royal xenodochium of San Antonio Abad mainly cared for pilgrims suffering from the disease known as St Anthony's fire; it became the seat of the Encomienda General of the Order of San Antonio in the kingdoms of Castile and Portugal, with more than twenty dependent commanderies. It stood under royal protection, traces of which remain in the coats of arms on the doorway and on the vault keystones, and its monks blessed objects such as the Tau cross or the bread of San Antonio, much sought after by the faithful.
The tau against the fire of San Antón
Curiosity
The Antonian monks tended pilgrims afflicted with ergotism, the so-called fire of San Antón, and handed out blessed objects marked with the tau-shaped cross, which was held to be a defence against plague and illness.
The charter of Castrojeriz
Historical milestone
Count García Fernández granted in 974 a fuero (charter) held to be the first in Castile, which put peasants capable of keeping a horse and weapons on equal footing with knights: faced with the Muslim threat on the county's frontiers, the count broadened his social base with these ordinances on the caballeros villanos (commoner knights) of Castrojeriz, whereby peasants who had a horse for war became equal in status to the infanzones, the lower-ranking nobility. The document was signed in the town itself on 8 March 974. The town was declared a historic-artistic ensemble in 1974.
The murder of Queen Leonor in the castle
Historical milestone
The fortress that count Nuño Núñez raised in the ninth century on the hill was in 1359 the setting of the violent death of queen Leonor of Castile, dowager queen of Aragon, in the framework of the purges of Pedro I.
The longest street on the Way
Curiosity
The built fabric stretches at the foot of the hill along a single street of more than fifteen hundred metres, the longest that the Camino Francés crosses in its whole course: a textbook example of linear Jacobean town planning.