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Bastide (planned town)Pyrénées-Atlantiques

Ainhoa

Ainhoa

Dimensions
A single street-square, lined with aligned Labourd houses of the 17th and 18th centuries, with painted timber framing and dated lintels; the maison Machitorénéa, the only survivor of the Thirty Years' War; the 13th-century church of Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption, with a single nave and wooden galleries; the cemetery with discoidal stelae of the 16th and 17th centuries; the fronton backing onto the cemetery; the Alhaxurruta washhouse-fountain; on the height, the chapel of Notre-Dame-de-l'Aubépine.
Period
Premonstratensian vicariate of the 12th-13th centuries; street bastide dated 1230 by the Liste des bastides; destruction during the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) and rebuilding in the 17th-18th centuries.
What stands there
Church listed as a monument historique in 1996 for its interior decoration. Les Plus Beaux Villages de France label. Wikipedia's Liste des bastides dates it to 1230, which makes it one of the oldest in the South-West; it is a street bastide, without square or grid, a rare form in the family of the bastides.

On the borders of the Labourd, a few steps from the Navarrese frontier, Ainhoa lines up its houses along a single broad street: it is a bastide village, born in the 12th-13th centuries when Premonstratensian monks established a vicariate there, with the agreement of Juan Perez de Baztan, lord of the place and a great figure at the court of Navarre. A stage of welcome and provisioning on the road to Compostela, the market town was destroyed during the Thirty Years' War and then rebuilt: its Labourd façades of the 17th and 18th centuries, with red or green timber framing turned towards the east, keep the memory of it, around the church of Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption and its cemetery with discoidal stelae. On the height, the chapel of l'Aubépine recalls an apparition of the Virgin to a shepherd. Ainhoa is among Les Plus Beaux Villages de France.

Further reading

Getting there : Freely accessible market town. Ainhoa was conceived as a stage for the pilgrims of Compostela. The chapel of Notre-Dame-de-l'Aubépine, at 389 metres above sea level, is reached by the way of the cross and offers a panorama over the Labourd as far as the coast. No market or tourist office opening hours are documented in the texts.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

See it on the map OpenStreetMap Directions

Ambient sound

Ainhoa
No machine-readable author provided. Harrieta171 assumed (based on copyright cla · CC BY 2.5 · Wikimedia Commons

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In the same department

All places — Pyrénées-Atlantiques (24).