Villa de Villarcayo Live Cam

As the exponent of the high peaks, lagoons and extensive pine and oak forests we find the Sierras de Neila and de la Demanda. Lands ruled by community traditions and activities that endure over time.

We leave from the Ciudad de Burgos, we head towards the mountains, passing next to Atapuerca, an important prehistoric site and next to the Camino de Santiago.

We arrived at Barbadillo de Herreros. Remarkable set of popular architecture, being famous for its medieval ironworks. We passed through Huerta de Arriba, with numerous emblazoned houses and arrived at the town of Neila. Their important past due to livestock is reflected in their houses. His link with the Royal Council of the Mesetas.

We continue on our way and arrive at the Lagunas Altas park, an enclave of extraordinary natural beauty formed by different lagoons with their own and differentiated characteristics.

Our next stop, Quintanar, where we will taste the typical dishes of the Sierra and then continue before returning to the Ciudad de Burgos, in Revenga, a place of singular natural beauty with a council house, hermitage and high medieval necropolis.

La Rioja is a Community rich in landscapes, natural resources, festivals, crafts and monuments, without forgetting its gastronomy and its unique wine with a designation of origin.

We left towards Belorado and began to contemplate the extensive vineyards of our neighboring community.

We make a stop in Santo Domingo de la Calzada on the Camino de Santiago, this town stands on an extensive plain on the banks of the Oja River at the western end of the region.

We visit the splendid Cathedral of San Salvador in a proto-Gothic style, built in the 12th century and completed in the 18th century, the walls, the square and its surroundings.

We leave for San Millán de la Cogolla, the cradle of Castilian Spanish, where we can visit the Monasteries of Suso and Yuso. The first is where the first dictionary of the Iberian Peninsula was found. The Yuso Monastery keeps works of art and very important original documents.

We have the possibility of visiting a Rioja wine cellar near San Millán.

Within a spectacular valley, not far from the Pico de San Lorenzo, 100 meters high we find the Monastery of Valvanera where we will make a stop on the way to regain strength.

And we return admiring the beautiful landscape crossing the Mansilla reservoir, the Canales de la Sierra and we will already enter the province of Burgos through Salas de los Infantes.

"Caput Castellae". Head of Castile and Court of Kings.

The city of Burgos has its origin in a military fortification of Count Diego Rodríguez Porcelos (884).

Crossroads on the Camino de Santiago and a hospitable city par excellence, today it has its hallmark in the Cathedral.

Guided tour of the city of Burgos where we will visit the Arch of Santa María, one of the 12 gates of the medieval city wall.

To Cathedral. Splendid Gothic monument declared a World Heritage Site.

Saint Nicholas of Barí. Where the stone altarpiece of Francisco de Colonia, 16th century, stands out.

Before going to visit the Monastery of Las Huelgas, a Cistercian monastery founded by King Alfonso VIII, whose history has been closely linked to the Crown of Castile, and to the Cartuja de Miraflores, a XV century monastery, Elizabethan style, founded by Juan II. de Castilla, where we highlight the tombs of Kings Juan II of Castilla and Isabel of Portugal, we will take a walk through the city where we can see the Espolón, Plaza Mayor, Statue of the Cid, Casa del Cordón, Main Theater, etc.

But the history of this area, and especially its pre-history, extends much further back; the archaeological site with Europe’s oldest human settlement is located only 15 km from the capital. The Sierra de Atapuerca, to the east of the province, holds the oldest remnants of the presence of our most remote ancestors, and its pits, shelters, and caves guard the secrets of a long prehistory that began 1.2 million years ago and continued until the dawn of history, five thousand years before our times.

Beginning in those distant times, and for thousands and tens of thousands of years, the inhabitants of the Sierra de Atapuerca little by little learned to hunt and fish, select the best fruits of the fields for their food, articulate their first words, control fire, develop an awareness of their collective and historical personality through veneration of the dead, decorate their bodies, build huts outside, and leave a record of their symbolic and spiritual world through drawings and pictures, which can also be seen in the Ojo Guareña caves.

The next step came with the domestication of plants and animals in middle of the Neolithic Age, which began approximately 5,000 years B.C. This allowed the development of more organized human groups and more complex social and spiritual life, as demonstrated by the extensive network of funeral monuments – megaliths: dolmens and menhirs – which dot the landscape, with one especially expressive example found at the Paramera de Sedano.

The Metal Age was a period of cumulative development in several different areas of human activity: the handling of increasingly harder and stronger metals; the assimilation of writing, which marks the passage from Prehistory to History; the expansion of crops and livestock, which gave rise to the settlement of groups in villages; the formation of permanent armies, and the consequent development of social hierarchy; the establishment of supra-tribal groups, or towns and the organization of the territory around several newborn cities built on hilltops, also known as castros (encampments).

The names of the corresponding ages are taken from the historical sequence of the development of metals: the Calcolithic (2500-1600 B.C.), when humans progressed from the use of stone to copper as the raw material of their tools, weapons, and household utensils. The Bronze period (1600-750 B.C.) was characterized by the development of advanced alloying techniques, with the Iron age (750-150 B.C.) giving way definitively to History and civilization.

During these different ages, the last prehistoric peoples left a record of their complex symbolic world in the burial fields and cave paintings. They perfected farming implements, and discovered the ploughshare; they invented the pottery wheel and the circular mill; minted coins, and finally learned to write, as a complex society ready to welcome History.

And lastly, the towns that fall partially or entirely within the present-day borders of the province. The Arévacos, important herders and metalworkers, settled to the southeast, with Clunia as one of their most important cities.

The Cántabros dominated the mountainous north, settling in Amaya, Los Ordejones, or Humada. The center of the territory of Burgos belonged to the Turmogodos – farmers and herders, whose most important settlements were Sasamón, Tardajos, and perhaps Lerma. And lastly, the Vacceos, who also occupied the southwest section of the province, with Castrojeriz and Roa as their most important cities, with highly developed agriculture that even produced surplus for trade.