Bardenas Reales, le désert qui commence après le dernier verger

01 Church

Church of St Mary Magdalene, Tudela

Iglesia de la Magdalena

Hidden from 1708 to 1986 behind a brick façade, the Romanesque doorway shows a Pantocrator surrounded by the four Evangelists in the tympanum. Built in the 12th century over a Mozarabic church, Tudela's main Romanesque church follows an off-axis nave to a flat chevet. Look on the archivolts for musicians and stonemasons.

02 Church

Iglesia de San Pedro (Tudela)

On the east flank of the Cerro de Santa Bárbara, along the Paseo del Castillo, all that survives of this Romanesque church is a stretch of wall showing the bases of three buttresses. This is where Tudela celebrated St Peter in Chains, its former patron. Mentioned as early as 1135, it was demolished in 1813.

03 Nature park

Morera del Castillo de Olite

At the royal palace of Olite survives a black mulberry that some say is more than 500 years old. Approach its trunk, 1.22 metres in diameter, beneath a 9-metre-high canopy kept standing by repeated care. Orange, lemon and pomegranate trees and jasmine, partly brought from Valencia, once perfumed this garden.

04 Castle

Palace of the Kings of Navarre of Olite

Castillo de Olite

Charles III the Noble turned Olite into a royal palace bristling with towers, its silhouette haphazard for lack of an overall plan. Burned in 1813 on the orders of Espoz y Mina, it lost its interior decoration before being rebuilt from 1937 onwards. Count its towers as you approach through the village lanes.

05 Archaeology

Mausoleum of the Atilii

Mausoleo de los Atilios

Stop in front of the only surviving façade of this 2nd- or 3rd-century Roman tomb, cut from local sandstone. Three generations of the Atilii, landowners enriched by the wheat of the plain, lay here beside the road linking Caesaraugusta to Pompaelo. Local people called it the Altar de los Moros.

06 Castle

Sádaba Castle

Castillo de Sádaba

On a rocky hill overlooking Sádaba, this rectangular castle measuring 38 by 30 metres lines up seven towers. With no keep or moat, it relies on its thick walls and a bent entrance, following the so-called Philip Augustus formula. From outside, take in its courses of dressed stone, laid in horizontal beds.

07 Cliff

Castildetierra

In the Bardena Blanca, Castildetierra raises its clay silhouette capped with a sandstone slab, sculpted by erosion in the middle of the Navarrese semi-desert. This hoodoo has become the emblem of the Bardenas Reales, a natural park designated a UNESCO biosphere reserve in 2000. Admire it from a distance, as this crumbly pillar looks so fragile.

08 Church

Iglesia de San Esteban (Arguedas)

Built entirely of brick on a stone base, the church of San Esteban in Arguedas dates mostly from the 16th and 17th centuries. Its great tower stacks a plain 16th-century shaft, two cubic storeys added in the 18th century and a double octagonal crown. Follow this stack with your eyes to the top, where the octagon succeeds the cube.

09 Church

Iglesia de Santa María (Valtierra)

Look up at the high altarpiece, begun in 1577 by Juan Martínez de Salamanca and finished in 1598, paid for by the people of Valtierra alone. Beneath all-white ribbed vaults, its gilding and statues alone catch the eye. Outside, the church's austere brick gives nothing away.

10 Nature park

Bardenas Reales

Parque Natural de las Bardenas Reales

There is neither village nor municipality in this Navarrese desert, run for centuries by a community of twenty-two entities with usage rights. Water and wind have sculpted clays, gypsum and sandstone into ravines, mesas and solitary buttes, the cabezos, on ground whitened by salt. Wait for the end of the day, when the low light deepens every gully.