Penya Montanyesa

As you allow behind central Aragón's parched flatlands, a touch of inexperienced tinges the landscape and there is a growing anticipation of very huge mountains somewhere up ahead. The Aragonese Pyrenees reach run over the 3000m mark and, facet their counterparts on the French side, kind the guts of the range, with much of its most luxurious scenery. Viewed from the south, their crenellated ridges fill the northern horizon where you switch. The verdant stream valleys are dotted with charming recent stone-built villages, and therefore the whole region forms a large journey playground to that Spaniards, and French neighbors – however amazingly few different foreigners – flock not just for the wonderful walking but conjointly for a host of other exciting activities from climb and skiing to white-water rafting and canyoning.

Monasterio de San Juan de la Peña

The two monasteries of San Juan de la Peña sit high on the rocky Sierra Delaware la Peña on top of Santa Cruz de la Serós village. A hearth in 1675 led the monks to abandon the first 10th-century Monasterio Viejo and build a replacement one, the Monasterio Nuevo, higher up the hill. Abandoned by the mid-19th century, these historic monasteries have since been restored and benefit a visit by anyone fascinated by recent design and sculpture, history, scenery or life.

The road from Santa Cruz winds 7km up to the Monasterio Viejo, tucked protectively under an overhanging lip of rock at a bend within the road. one amongst the most vital monasteries of medieval Aragón, it contains the tombs of Aragón's 1st 3 kings – Ramiro I (1036–64), Sancho Ramírez (1064–94) and Pedro I (1094–1104) – and 2 churches (the lower one a rare Mozarabic–Romanesque hybrid, the higher one pure Romanesque). However its greatest highlight is the Romanesque cloister, with marvelous carved 12th- and 13th-century capitals portrayal stories from Genesis and the lifetime of Christ. 

The Monasterio Nuevo could be a larger, two-towered, brick complicated one.5km any up the road. It hosts the sizable Centro Delaware Interpretación Del Monasterio, built over the archaeological remains of ruined elements of the religious residence that has Spanish-language panels on the history of the monasteries and therefore the kingdom of Aragón, likewise as a glass floor through that you look down on somewhat sleazy large models of monks and scenes of monastic life. 

Conjointly here is that the Centro Delaware Interpretación Del Reino Delaware Aragón within the reconstructed main religious residence church, taking part in a 40-minute audiovisual show concerning early Aragonese history. Tickets for each monasteries are oversubscribed at the Monasterio Nuevo and, throughout the summer (June to August), this can be wherever you will have to park. A bus shuttles all the way down to the Monasterio Viejo and back each jiffy. Price ticket costs rely upon what number of the interpretation centers you would like to go to.

Iglesia de San Pedro El Viejo

The church of San Pedro is one amongst the oldest and most significant type of architecture structures in Spain, dating from the first twelfth century. It's particularly notable for its hexangular tower, its open cloister adorned with thirty eight fantastically carved  type of architecture capitals (in some cases 19th-century copies), and therefore the mausoleum containing the tombs of 2 Aragonese kings (and brothers), Alfonso one (r 1104–34) and Ramiro II (r 1134–37).