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

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

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

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

Taste Roncal, the first cheese in Spain to get a denominación de origen, in 1981

Go to Gayarre's house museum and his mausoleum by Benlliure, and find out who he was

Be at boundary marker 262 on the Ernaz pass on 13 July for the Tribute of the Three Cows

Work out what is being enacted: an arbitral sentence of 16 October 1375, on a ceremony older than the sentence

Drive up into the Belagua valley and the Larra massif above, which is high karst

Roncal was the first cheese in Spain to be granted a denominación de origen, in 1981, and the point of it was to stop other cheeses calling themselves roncal. It is made by hand from raw Latxa sheep's milk in the Navarrese Pyrenees under the Mesa de los Tres Reyes. In 882 Sancho García granted the valley the right to bring its flocks down to winter in the Bardenas Reales, which they had earned fighting the Saracens. The valley also produced Julián Gayarre, the greatest Spanish tenor of the 19th century, whose mausoleum by Mariano Benlliure is in the village of Roncal. And every 13 July, at boundary marker 262 on the Ernaz pass — standing in for the lost Stone of San Martín — the men of the French Barétous valley hand three cows to the men of Roncal, under an arbitral sentence of 16 October 1375 that is considered the oldest treaty in Europe still in force. The ceremony itself is older than the sentence. Navarre made it intangible cultural heritage on 24 January 2011.

The Roncal Valley: Cheese, a Tenor and a Cattle Tribute

Walk La Mina and work out that a town of this size drove a tunnel through a mountain between 1555 and 1560

Work out what the problem was that made it necessary

Go into the basilica of Santa María de los Sagrados Corporales and find the apse, the first surviving Romanesque-to-Mudéjar transition

Walk the walls up over San Jorge and San Cristóbal, which is a considerable climb

Find out what the Sagrados Corporales relic is and why this basilica was built round it

Daroca is strung along a valley between two hills, San Jorge at 855 metres and San Cristóbal at 931, with walls running up over both. The problem with a town in a valley is that the valley floods, so between 1555 and 1560 the townspeople drove a tunnel — La Mina — straight through the hill to carry floodwater out the other side. It is reckoned one of the most important public works of the 16th century anywhere in Europe. The basilica holds the Sagrados Corporales relic, and its apse is the first surviving example of the transition from Romanesque to Aragonese Mudéjar.

Daroca: A Tunnel Through a Mountain, in 1560

Walk into the lower church and work out that the roof over your head is the mountain

Find the royal pantheon where kings of Aragon and Navarre were buried for five centuries

Go into the cloister under the overhang and look at the carved capitals

Find out what the founding legend of Aragon says happened here with Voto, Félix and Garci Ximénez

Find out what the monastery claimed to have kept, and where that object is said to be now

The old monastery of San Juan de la Peña is built directly under a vast rock overhang, with the cliff as its roof — the most important monastery in Aragon in the early Middle Ages, and the royal pantheon where kings of Aragon and Navarre were buried across five centuries. It reached its height under Sancho Ramírez. The founding legend of the kingdom of Aragon is set here: Christian fighters gathering with the hermits Voto and Félix and acclaiming Garci Ximénez as their leader. The Holy Grail was said to have been kept here before it went to Valencia.