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Nájera
Nájera
Two cities warrant attention on La Rioja’s stretch of the Camino de Santiago, the 1,000-year-old pilgrimage route to the relics of St. James in Galicia’s Santiago de Compostela. The towns of Nájera and Santo Domingo de la Calzada, each with impressive monasteries, have welcomed famished pilgrims since 1016, the year King Sancho rerouted the southern, Jacobean way to pass through La Rioja.
From 918 to 1076 Nájera was the Royal seat of the Kingdom of Pamplona-Nájera and, as such, the lead political center during the early stages of the Christian Reconquest. Around this time, the Moors reoccupied the nearby town of Calahorra, spreading fears among the royals of Nájera that an attack was imminent. Legend holds that, while hunting one afternoon, the falcon of King García Sánchez III flew into a cave after a partridge; when the King chased after it, he was witness to an image of the Virgin Mary with child, which the king took as a sign he would be victorious in the pending battle. Once he had defeated the Moors and retaken the town of Calahorra, the king ordered that the Monasterio de Santa María la Real be constructed at the site of the cave. The cave is preserved at the foot of the nave of the present 16th-century Gothic monastery. A royal pantheon bears 12 tombs of kings and queens from the dynasties of the 10th and 11th centuries, while in the Gothic cloister with its notable plateresque tracery, later kings have been laid to rest.
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