Hermitage of Santa María de la Antigua

What leaves you speechless on entering Santa María de la Antigua, known in Zumárraga simply as Antio, is its wooden interior. Rising from six stone columns, an oak framework forms a projecting choir loft and supports part of the roof, and all of it – beams, parapets, tie beams and corbels – is joined by tongue and groove, without any metal whatsoever: not a nail or a screw in sight. It is one of the most significant works of carpentry in the Basque Country, and it is no coincidence that it has been dubbed the cathedral of Basque hermitages.

It pays to look up and take in the details. The wood is carved with female heads, tools and geometric motifs rooted in folk tradition, the same ones found on kutxas (carved chests) and argizaiolas (funerary candle boards). The choir loft, completed in 1524, originally reached halfway along the church before taking on its current U shape, a layout widespread in the region, particularly in the French Basque Country during the 16th century.

The building, with a single nave and a gabled roof, stands on the southern slope of Mount Beloki and dates from the late 12th or early 13th century. Its south-facing Romanesque doorway features a slightly pointed arch with four archivolts, alongside a Gothic window; the trapezoidal apse was added in 1480. It was Zumárraga's parish church until 1576, when a new church was built in the town centre and this one became «the old one» (la antigua). Miguel López de Legazpi, discoverer of the Philippines, was baptised here, and Saint Ignatius of Loyola and Saint Francis Borgia both came here to pray in retreat.

Highlights among its pieces include a Gothic Virgin and Child with an apple in her hand, a Christ also in the Gothic style, an archaic Pietà, two Renaissance figures and the Romanesque baptismal font beneath the choir loft. If you can, it is well worth coming on 2 July, the feast of Saint Elizabeth, when Zumárraga's ezpatadantza (sword dance) is performed both inside and outside the church. Together with Loyola and Aránzazu, the hermitage forms part of the Route of the Three Temples of Ignatian Land.