Santander → Oviedo

01 Monument

Palacio de La Magdalena

Paid for by public subscription for the royal family, the palace was built from 1909 to 1911 on the site of a small fort guarding the entrance to the bay of Santander. Alfonso XIII spent his summers here; its 1914 stables imitate a medieval English village. From the park surrounding the palace, look out to the island of Mouro just opposite.

02 Museum

National Museum and Research Center of Altamira

Museo Nacional y Centro de Investigación de Altamira

Designed by Juan Navarro Baldeweg and opened in 2001, this museum houses the Neocave, a copy of Altamira that spares the original from the crowds. Look up at the ceiling, where Pedro Saura and Matilde Múzquiz repainted the bison using Palaeolithic techniques. Their study of the original even revealed previously unknown paintings and engravings.

03 Monument

Collegiate church and cloister of St Juliana

Colegiata de Santillana del Mar

Santillana owes its name to this 12th-century Romanesque collegiate church, built over the relics of St Juliana. Look at the south portal, with its niche where the saint subdues the devil and its Pantocrator in a mandorla held by four angels. In the cloister, the older capitals tell stories, while the more recent ones unfurl foliage.

04 Museum

El Capricho

Gaudí designed this villa for Máximo Díaz de Quijano, an indiano who made his fortune in Cuba and died a few months after building work ended in 1885. You can recognise from afar its cylindrical tower like a Persian minaret, entirely clad in ceramic. Gaudí himself never saw this work, built outside Catalonia.

05 Museum

Castillo de San Vicente de la Barquera

On its rocky spur, the Castillo del Rey closes off the walls of the Puebla Vieja and stretches over more than 50 metres. Spot its two towers, square to the east and pentagonal to the west, linked by a central block that was once vaulted. Restored in the 1990s, it now houses a museum and exhibitions.

06 Gorge

Desfiladero de La Hermida

Drive along the bottom of a 22-kilometre cleft carved by the Deva, the longest gorge in Spain, between Panes and Liébana. Its limestone walls sometimes exceed 600 metres, and their crest stays invisible from below. Holm oaks and cork oaks grow here, and to the south, Lebeña keeps its Mozarabic church.

07 Village

Potes

Where the Deva meets the Quiviesa, Potes, capital of the Liébana, keeps the Torre del Infantado, built by the Mendoza family in the 15th century. Cross the old San Cayetano bridge, in the heart of a town burnt in 1937 and then rebuilt. Its mild microclimate allows vines to grow, from which orujo, the valley's spirit, is made.

08 Abbey

Santo Toribio de Liébana

Monasterio de Santo Toribio de Liébana

Near Potes, on the northern flank of the Viorna, the monastery keeps a fragment of the Cross that the Church holds to be the largest known. In the 8th century, the monk Beatus of Liébana wrote his Commentary on the Apocalypse here. Approach the Door of Forgiveness, which opens only in Jubilee years.

09 Viewpoint

Fuente Dé cable car

Teleférico de Fuente Dé

Opened in 1966, this cable car climbs 753 metres in a single stretch, in three minutes forty. Press up against the cabin window to watch the limestone wall draw closer, then fall away beneath your feet. At the top, at 1850 metres, the trails head straight into the heart of the Picos de Europa.

10 Village

Bulnes

No road leads to Bulnes, a hamlet in the Picos de Europa linked to the world only by a footpath until 2001. A funicular now runs beneath the mountain from Poncebos, through a 2,227-metre tunnel. Save the old path for the way down, just over an hour above the clear waters of the stream.

11 Church

Basílica de Santa María la Real de Covadonga

In the heart of the Picos de Europa, the basilica of Covadonga, completed in 1901, raises the slender spires of its façade towers in pink limestone. Its neo-Romanesque nave succeeded the sanctuary of the Santa Cueva, ravaged by fire in 1777. Let your gaze drift from the rosy stone to the green of the mountains framing it.

12 Mountain

Lakes of Covadonga

Lagos de Covadonga

Above Covadonga, two small glacial lakes, the Enol and then the Ercina, open up in the western massif of the Picos de Europa. On the climb up, it's easy to see why Bernard Hinault compared the ascent to Alpe d'Huez, when the Vuelta first finished here in 1983. Near the Ercina, iron and mercury mines kept working until 1979.

13 Monument

Roman Bridge of Cangas de Onís

Puente romano de Cangas de Onís

Despite its nickname of Roman bridge, the structure spanning the Sella actually dates from the reign of Alfonso XI, and raises a large stilted arch between two smaller, unequal ones. At the centre of the large arch hangs a Victory Cross placed there in 1939. Salmon anglers frequent its banks.

14 Nature

Bufones de Pría

In the limestone cliff of Llames de Pría, these shafts open to the sea are the westernmost on the Asturian coast. On a rising tide with a heavy swell, you'll hear the blast before you see the spray shoot more than ten metres high. The rumble carries for several kilometres, like the breathing of the rock.

15 Cave

Tito Bustillo Cave

Cueva de Tito Bustillo

In Ribadesella, the cave named Tito Bustillo stayed sealed for millennia after its entrance collapsed, until its discovery in 1968. Inside, you'll come across horses and deer spread over twelve panels, the oldest painting dated to around 33,000 years ago. Since 2008 the site has been a World Heritage Site, together with the painted caves grouped around Altamira.

16 Village

Cudillero

Mentioned in a deed as early as 1285, the port of Cudillero has lived from fishing since the Middle Ages, and its people are still called pixuetos. Look at its colourful houses rising like an amphitheatre above the boats. Nearby, the Quinta de Selgas, a 19th-century palace, holds gardens and paintings by Goya.

17 Church

Santa María del Naranco

On the southern slope of Mount Naranco, Ramiro I had this building raised in the 840s, a palace according to the most widely accepted theory, later turned into a church. Some 21 metres long, this pre-Romanesque building has two storeys, the lower one barrel-vaulted on transverse arches. San Miguel de Lillo lies some 240 metres further up.

18 Church

Oviedo Cathedral

Catedral de San Salvador de Oviedo

Begun in the late 13th century, Oviedo cathedral waited three centuries for its tower to be completed. Make your way to the Cámara Santa, a 9th-century chapel where the Victory Cross and the Cross of the Angels gleam, emblems of Asturias and Oviedo. The neighbouring Holy Ark holds the Holy Shroud, among other relics.