Go into the church and find the casket at the head of it holding the heart of Charles II of Navarre

Walk the fortified gallery round the outside of the church and look out over the Bardenas

Work out what Cisneros ordered demolished and what survived the order

Find out about the Estudio General Charles II began here and why it stopped

Eat the sugared almonds and the migas the village is known for

Ujué sits on a hill in the Navarrese Ribera with a fortified church of two crenellated towers looking out over the Bardenas and, on a clear day, the Pyrenees. The kings of the house of Évreux were attached to it: Charles II, known to history as the Bad, gave his heart to the Virgin here and it is still kept in a casket at the head of the church. He also started a university in the village, abandoned for lack of money. Cardinal Cisneros ordered the fortress demolished; the church with its towers and the parish house survived the order. The romería from the surrounding villages still walks here every year.

Ujué: A Fortified Church With a King's Heart In It

Walk the towers and the wall walks and work out how much of the silhouette is decoration rather than defence

Find the black mulberry inside, which is protected as a natural monument of Navarre

Work out what was lost in 1813, when Espoz y Mina had the palace burnt to deny it to the French

Find out what Charles III put in here that a castle would never have had — gardens, a menagerie, hanging gardens

Come in summer for the Festival de Teatro Clásico, which uses the palace as its main venue

Charles III of Navarre turned an existing castle at Olite into a permanent royal seat in the 15th century and gave it everything a court of the period was supposed to have: towers, gardens, moats, hanging gardens, even a menagerie. The silhouette of towers above the walls is why it is probably the most emblematic civil building in Navarre and its most visited monument. In 1813 the guerrilla leader Espoz y Mina had it burnt, to stop Napoleon's troops fortifying it — so the towers survive and the interior decoration and the gardens are gone for good.

Olite: The Palace the Kings of Navarre Built for Themselves

Go into the abbey church and see how little decoration the Cistercians allowed themselves

Walk the Gothic cloister, begun in the 14th century and finished around 1500

Find the chapter house off the east walk, older than the cloister built around it

La Oliva was the first Cistercian foundation in the kingdom of Navarre, founded by García Ramírez between about 1145 and 1150. Its abbey church, paid for by Sancho VI the Wise and Sancho VII the Strong, is a severe building of three naves in the passage from Romanesque to Gothic, with almost no decoration. The Gothic cloister was begun in the mid-14th century and finished under abbot Pedro de Eraso, who ruled from 1468 to 1502. The monks were driven out by the confiscations of 1835 and the buildings fell into ruin; Trappist monks came back in 1927, and they still live here and make wine.

La Oliva: The First Cistercian Abbey in Navarre, Still Working

Go into the Palacio de Sada and find the room where Ferdinand the Catholic was born in 1452

Work out how the town got the second half of its name and when

Go into San Esteban and down into the crypt, which is the best thing in the town

Walk the walls and the Plaza de la Villa, protected as an ensemble since 1968

Work out what the Cinco Villas are and why Sos became their capital in 1711

Ramiro I took Sos into the kingdom of Aragon in 1044. In 1452, in the middle of the Navarrese civil war, Queen Juana Enríquez came to the town — then simply Sos — and gave birth to the infante Ferdinand, later Ferdinand the Catholic, in the Palacio de Sada. That birth added del Rey Católico to the name. It became capital of the Cinco Villas in 1711, and the whole historic centre was protected in 1968: walls, churches, the Plaza de la Villa and a church with a crypt and a cloister that opens off the street climbing from it.

Sos del Rey Católico: Where Ferdinand Was Born

Tour the castle and its museum on the life of Francis Xavier

Find the dance of death painted on the walls of the Torre del Santo Cristo, the only one of its kind in Spain

Walk through the Foz de Lumbier, the Irati's gorge, and watch the vultures on its walls

Francis Xavier was born in this castle in 1506 and took his name from it, and went on to carry Christianity to India and Japan. The castle goes back to the 10th century; in 1516 Cardinal Cisneros ordered it pulled down because its lords had fought for Navarre's independence, and his men razed the outer wall and filled the moat but left the core standing. In the Torre del Santo Cristo are a late-Gothic crucifix and wall paintings of the dance of death, the only ones of their kind in Spain. Eight kilometres west, the Irati has cut the Foz de Lumbier, a gorge just over a kilometre long between walls 150 to 400 metres high where griffon and Egyptian vultures nest.

Javier: Francis Xavier's Castle and the Foz de Lumbier

Go down into the 11th-century crypt and look at the column proportions, which look impossible until you work out what they carry

Find the royal pantheon of the early kings of Navarre

Go to an office and hear the community sing, which they have done again since 1954

Work out the monastery's political role in the making of the kingdom of Pamplona and then Navarre

Walk out to the viewpoint above the Yesa reservoir and the Aragón valley the Camino comes down

Leyre stands above the Yesa reservoir on a branch of the Camino that runs down the Aragón valley from Jaca, and it was central to the making of the kingdom of Pamplona and then of Navarre, and to the early stages of the reconquest. Its 11th-century crypt is the thing to come for: short, immensely thick columns with enormous capitals, holding up a low vault — a structure that looks wrong until you understand it was built to carry the church above. The monastery nearly disappeared in the 19th-century disentailments and Benedictines returned to it in 1954.

Leyre: The Crypt Under the Kingdom of Navarre

Walk across the 11th-century bridge, which is the whole reason the town exists

Find the monument at the junction where the Francés and the Aragonés become one road

Work out who built the bridge and why nobody can say which queen it was

Go into the church of the Crucifijo, built by the Templars, and find the Y-shaped crucifix

Walk a stretch of the Camino out of town westwards and watch how the pilgrim traffic doubles here

Two routes cross the Pyrenees from France — the Camino Francés over Roncesvalles and the Camino Aragonés over Somport — and they merge just before this town, which is why every pilgrim on both routes walks through it. The Romanesque bridge over the Arga that gives the place its name was built in the 11th century, by tradition at the order of an unnamed queen of Navarre, specifically so that pilgrims could cross safely. A monument at the edge of town marks the junction with the inscription that from here on there is only one way to Santiago.