5 Best Sights in Jaca, The Pyrenees

The door to Jaca's town hall has a notable Renaissance design.

In July and August, a guided train tour departs from the Jaca RENFE station, heading to the valley and Canfranc's magnificent Belle Époque train station, which has a bewitching history and was used as a location in the 1965 film Doctor Zhivago. At the time of writing the summer guided tour had not been announced, but a non-tourist train runs year-round between Jaca and Canfranc. The Canfranc station, right at the border of France, had been famously abandoned since 1970 and was slowly falling to pieces until the Barceló group opened a 104-room luxury five-star hotel in the building early this year. Unfortunately, many of the areas are now restricted to hotel guests. If you're staying elsewhere, the Canfranc tourism office also offers guided tours of some areas to visitors. 

An important stop on the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Jaca's 11th-century Catedral de San Pedro has lovely carved capitals and was the first French-Romanesque cathedral in Spain, paving the way for later Spanish Romanesque architecture. Inside the cathedral and near the cloisters, the Museo Diocesano has excellent Romanesque and Gothic frescoes and artifacts collected from nearby churches.

The massive pentagonal Ciudadela is an impressive example of 17th-century military architecture. It has a display of more than 35,000 military miniatures, arranged to represent different periods of history. Check the website to confirm hours, which vary by month.

This fine example of Gothic architecture, constructed in 1445, was built as a private royal residence on the site of a burned-down palace. It became a prison in 1602 and was one of the only buildings to survive the destruction of Jaca during the War of Independence with France. You can't go inside.