TOWNS AND MONUMENTS OF THE MIDDLE AREA AND RIBERA NAVARRA
Navarra, contrary to popular belief, can be warm, even suffocating. If you still doubt it, the Bardenas desert will change your mind. Yes, a desert in the middle of Navarra, arid and dry, with sculptural shapes shaped by the wind and with torrid heat in the summer months. In the middle lands and on the coast, temperatures are mild in winter and very hot in summer. There are many historical monuments, where the Olite castle is its most notable piece. It was built by Charles III the Noble, a Navarrese king born in France in 1387, who built it to his liking, full of patios, gardens, viewpoints and battlements. From its high towers, perched in the mountains in the distance, we can see Ujué, a town that grew up sheltered by the Santa María Fortress Sanctuary and which was the watchtower most feared by the Moorish people during the times of the reconquest. More peaceful is the visit to the Monasterio de la Oliva, next to the Aragón River and its fertile fields. It is a Cistercian temple, which means that there is a lot of balance and harmony and little ornamentation, an architecture designed for meditation. Going further south, and crossing the aforementioned Bardenas desert, we will arrive at Tudela, whose historic center is crowded around its magnificent cathedral. It combines architectural styles ranging from the Romanesque of the cloister, to the Gothic of the naves and the Baroque of its chapels. There remains one last visit, somewhat more secluded, to the Monastery of Fitero, the first Cistercian temple built in the Iberian Peninsula and which arose in the year 1140 alone on the border of the three warring kingdoms of Navarre, Aragon and Castile.
