Logbook · 6 places

What to see and do in Ribadesella

What to see and do in Ribadesella (Oriente, Asturias): 6 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 3 Nature · 1 Curiosities · 1 Historical milestones

How far each place is from the centre of Ribadesella

Towns near Ribadesella

What to see in Caravia 8.7 km · 3 places
What to see in Cangas de Onís 11 km · 9 places
What to see in Parres 13 km · 5 places
What to see in Colunga 16 km · 8 places
What to see in Onís 19 km · 5 places
What to see in Amieva 22 km · 4 places
What to see in Piloña 24 km · 6 places
What to see in Cabrales 24 km · 7 places

Spain › Principality of Asturias › Oriente › Ribadesella

What to see and do in Ribadesella

Ribadesella
Village
Ribadesella is a seafaring town of around 5,591 inhabitants, a concejo in the Oriente of Asturias, at the mouth of the Sella river, founded by Alfonso X the Wise in the 13th century, and which was one of the main Asturian ports in the 19th century. It borders the Cantabrian Sea to the north, Llanes to the east, Cangas de Onís and Parres to the south, and Caravia to the west, and combines beaches and cliffs with steep mountains and karst massifs by the sea. Its Tito Bustillo cave, with Magdalenian art, is a World Heritage Site, and on the first Saturday of August following the 2nd it hosts the finish of the International Sella Descent, a Festival of International Tourist Interest.
Cave of Tito Bustillo
Nature
A cave with prehistoric paintings dated between 33,000 and 10,000 BC, located in Ribadesella; its set of galleries, around seven hundred metres long, was discovered in 1968 by the Torreblanca caving group, guided by young people from the town. Three weeks later, one of the discoverers, Celestino Fernández Bustillo, known as Tito Bustillo, died in a mountaineering accident, and the site was renamed in his honour. It is accessed through a tunnel opened in 1970, which leads to the main gallery, 540 metres long, with a niche of red signs and a painting of a horse; from there the chamber of paintings begins, with figures of deer. It has been a World Heritage Site since July 2008, within the group Cave of Altamira and Palaeolithic cave art of the Cantabrian coast.
The Cuevona of Cuevas del Agua
Curiosity
The only road access to the village of Cuevas del Agua: a karst gallery some three hundred metres long, full of stalactites and stalagmites, through which the road runs beside the stream that carved it.
Cave of les Pedroses
Nature
A small cavity next to the village of El Carmen, in Ribadesella, which holds engravings of three headless animals, a complete finely drawn horse and the remains of two or three more figures, as well as a site of the Asturian culture. It was discovered in 1956 by Francisco Jordá, and its depictions were made in three distinct stages; it also includes an ideomorph of the type known as “eared”. Its figures of headless animals make this sanctuary one of the most singular of Franco-Cantabrian art.
Entrepeñes and Vega beach
Nature
A natural monument declared by Decree 142/2001, protecting some 37 hectares beside the village of Vega, in the concejo of Ribadesella: the sandy shore, its dune system, the Acebo stream and the Entrepeñes gorge. In the gorges paleontological sites have been found with dinosaur ichnites and traces of former sea levels; the plain where Vega sits was originally an estuary, now fossilised by sedimentation. Among its vegetation the endangered bastard chamomile and golden fly stand out, and among its fauna, the peregrine falcon in the gorge and cormorants and gulls on the beach, also listed as a Point of Geological Interest.
The bridges of the Sella in Ribadesella
Historical milestone
The first wooden bridge over the Sella was laid in 1865 and was replaced in 1898 by an iron one designed by the engineer José Eugenio Ribera; blown up in 1937 during the war, it was rebuilt in concrete around 1940.