Jaca: Citadel and Cathedral

Two buildings five minutes apart. The cathedral of San Pedro was begun in the last quarter of the 11th century on the initiative of Sancho Ramírez, at almost the same moment as Santiago de Compostela, and it carries the architectural vocabulary that then travelled the whole Camino — the chequerboard billet moulding and the ball ornament on the interior supports. The citadel is a five-pointed star fort on the Italian model, built outside the town walls and preserved essentially intact: ditch, bastions, scarps and counterscarps, barracks, powder stores and tunnels, entered across a three-arched bridge and a drawbridge. The Spanish army held it into modern times.