Burgos information
Road to Santiago in Burgos
The province of Burgos is the main figure on
the Road to Santiago within the Iberian Peninsula. Over the almost
114 kilometres that cross its territory there is an impressive
heritage which has rightly won the name of Heritage of Mankind.
Redecilla del Camino, Belorada, Villafranca Montes de Oca, San
Juan de Ortega, the city of Burgos, San Anton and Castrojeriz
are the main milestones.
The French Road
The province of Burgos has a strategic geographical situation,
which made it a compulsory passing for the millions of European
pilgrims who, from their countries of origin, went in search of
the tomb of St. James the Apostle.
With a clear and decisive route, the French Road, an itinerary
that coincides with the route described in the 12th century by
the French monk, Aymeric Picaud, crosses the whole province from
East to West. Following an almost equidistant corridor between
the Cantabrian Mountain Range, to the North, and the river Duero,
to the South, the different villages, towns and landscape appear
to the passing pilgrims.
Apart from a contrasted and beautiful nature where flatland, hills,
valleys and moors alternate, all the places crossed by the 114
kilometres in the province of Burgos of the French Road preserve
an important mark of its passing.
The Miracle of the Light
On the inside of the church of San Juan de Ortega an exceptional
phenomenon in the Christian world can be contemplated. Every year
during the spring and autumnal equinoxes a ray of the setting
sun comes in through a window and clearly falls, in a surprising
mixture of architectonic techniques and astronomic observation,
upon a Romanesque capital where a beautiful representation of
the Virgin's Annunciation is sculpted.