Montearagón Castle

On the high, rounded summit of Monte Aragón, within the municipality of Quicena and very close to Huesca, stand the ruins of a place that was at once a fortress, a royal residence and a monastery. The hill gave its name to the complex, and you only need to climb up to its walls to understand why this site was chosen: from here you look down over the city that was, for many years, the great prize sought by the kings of Aragon.

Its founder was Sancho Ramírez, who built it in the Romanesque style as a Christian stronghold facing Muslim Huesca. He conceived it as a fortified enclosure with soldiers' quarters within its walls, and made it his residence and the seat of his court until his death, which came, fittingly, during the siege of Huesca. To house his armies, he had the village of Montearagón built nearby. Heir to the campaigns his father, Ramiro I, had waged against the taifa of Saragossa, the king made this castle a cornerstone in the origins of the Royal House of Aragon.

But it wasn't only soldiers who lived within the walls. The enclosure also held a lavish church and a royal abbey, that of Jesús de Nazaret de Montearagón, always run by canons following the Rule of St Augustine. Thanks to the patronage of the Crown, it became one of the most important monasteries of the Middle Ages: in the 12th century, no fewer than one hundred and four churches and villages answered to it, and its monks held seats in the kingdom's Cortes.

The castle's military life faded after the capture of Huesca and the end of the wars with the Muslims on the peninsula, but the religious community carried on for some 750 years. Today the complex lies in ruins, yet its outline remains unmistakable in the landscape around Huesca. Declared a National Monument in 1931, it is well worth a visit, both for its striking silhouette and for everything it meant to the birth of Aragon.