Colegiata de Santa Juliana

A stroll along Santillana’s cobbled main street, past solemn 15th- to 18th-century nobles’ houses, leads to this beautiful 12th-century Romanesque ex-monastery. The big drawcard is the cloister, a formidable storehouse of Romanesque handiwork, with the capitals of its columns finely carved into a huge variety of figures. The monastery originally grew up around the relics of Santa Juliana (her name later modified to become Santillana), a 3rd-century Christian martyr from Turkey whose sepulchre stands in the centre of the church.