Find the Palace of the Kings of Navarre, one of the few Romanesque civil buildings left in Spain

Climb the steps to San Pedro de la Rúa and look at the cloister

Work out what Estella was for: a burgh founded around 1090 and deliberately settled with Franks under a charter copied from Jaca

Go out to the Fuente del Vino at Irache and take the pilgrim's measure, not more

Find out what Estella was in the Carlist wars and why it mattered

Estella was founded around 1090 by Sancho Ramírez of Aragon and Pamplona, the first Pamplonese burgh to be formed, beside the older settlement of Lizarra — and it filled with settlers from elsewhere, many of them Franks from southern France, under a charter modelled on the one the same king had given the Franks of Jaca. It has more Romanesque civil architecture than almost anywhere in Spain, including the Palace of the Kings of Navarre, one of the very few Romanesque secular buildings left in the country. It was the Carlist capital in the 19th century. Just outside, at Irache, a winery keeps a fountain that runs wine for pilgrims.

Estella: The Town Built for the Camino

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.

Puente la Reina: Where the Two Caminos Meet

Walk the 5.3km route from Baquedano to the source of the Urederra in the Urbasa-Andía Natural Park, where the turquoise river emerges from a karst cliff in a waterfall more than 100m high; book online and park in Baquedano

Look for vultures and eagles above the beech and oak forest along the route

Look into the pools below the falls, turquoise with dissolved lime — and stay out of them, since swimming is banned

The Urederra comes out of the bottom of a karst cliff in the Urbasa massif already a full river — water that has soaked through limestone for weeks arriving in one place, so clear and so saturated with dissolved lime that it reads as turquoise. The walk up to the source is 5.3 kilometres through beech forest with a series of pools below the falls. Numbers are capped and you book online.

The Source of the Urederra: A Turquoise River Out of a Cliff

Walk the Citadel's five bastions — San Antón, La Victoria, San Juan, Santa María and Santiago — from the Vuelta del Castillo park

Walk the full 825m of Calle Estafeta, the most famous stretch of the San Fermín bull-running route

Find the Hemingway statue outside the Plaza de Toros

Order a coffee at Café Iruña on Plaza del Castillo, open since 1888

A Renaissance star fortress and a narrow medieval street that becomes the world's most famous bull run for nine days each July — Pamplona outside San Fermín is a quiet walled city with both still there to see.

Pamplona: The Citadel and the Bull-Run Streets

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

Eat the vegetables — artichokes, borage, cardoon, asparagus, piquillo peppers — which is what the town is for

Come in April for the vegetable fair, which is a serious event here rather than a novelty

Find out who Quintilian and Prudentius were, and that both came from this town

Find out what the Fames Calagurritana was and find the Matrona on the town's arms

Go into the cathedral, which stands outside the old walls rather than inside them

Built on the Vasconic settlement of Kalakorikos, this was Roman Calagurris Nassica Iulia. It became famous for Pompey's siege, in which almost the whole population is recorded as having starved rather than surrender — the Fames Calagurritana, still symbolised on the town's arms by the Matrona. It produced Quintilian, the great teacher of rhetoric, and Prudentius, among the finest Christian poets of antiquity, whose Peristephanon includes hymns to Calahorra's own patrons Emeterius and Celedonius. It is now the vegetable capital of the Ebro, with a cathedral and a vegetable fair in April that the town takes very seriously indeed.

Calahorra: A Roman Town That Ate Itself

Walk the length of Calle del Laurel and eat the speciality in at least four different bars

Find the Blanco y Negro, the oldest bar in Logroño

Stand in front of Santa María de la Redonda and its twin towers by Martín de Beratúa

Go inside and look up at the Gothic central nave, built between 1516 and 1538

Calle del Laurel in Logroño's old town is little more than 200 metres long, and with the streets around it holds more than 65 bars. The custom is that each one serves one or two specialities — mushrooms, pinchos morunos, pig's ear, patatas bravas — so an evening here is a walk from bar to bar rather than a meal. The street was rebuilt after the town walls came down in 1862, and the demolition of 1878 that finally opened it to the next street produced the Blanco y Negro, still the oldest bar in Logroño. A few minutes away, the twin towers Martín de Beratúa built for the co-cathedral of Santa María de la Redonda are the emblem of the city.

Logroño: Calle del Laurel and the Twin Towers of La Redonda

Go into the cloister and work out why the mosque underneath had to be demolished rather than adapted — the two buildings faced different ways

Find the Puerta del Juicio on the west front and read the relief of the damned

Find out who Benjamin of Tudela was and how far he travelled in the 12th century

Eat the vegetables — this is the Ribera, and the artichokes, borage and asparagus are the point of the place

Come in spring for the vegetable season, which is short and taken very seriously here

Tudela was a major Muslim town on the Ebro, and its cathedral — late Romanesque on Cistercian lines, begun at the end of the 12th century under Sancho VI and finished under two successors — was built on the site of the Great Mosque of the 9th to 11th centuries. Because the two buildings did not face the same way the mosque had to come down, and only some of its foundations were reused. The Judgement Doorway on the west front carries a crowded relief of the damned. Benjamin of Tudela, the 12th-century Jewish traveller whose account of a journey across the Mediterranean and the Near East is a major medieval source, was born here. The town is also the vegetable capital of the Ebro.