Santillana del Mar

A Cantabrian Heritage Village Grown Around The Collegiate Church Of Santa Juliana, Lined With Escutcheoned Noble Houses And Largely Unaltered Since The Eighteenth Century · Santillana del Mar, Cantabria

A single street of honey-coloured stone manor houses fifteen minutes from Altamira, and the reason it has a row of its own is that the cave and the village are two different visits in the same municipality. Santillana grew around a collegiate church holding the relics of Saint Juliana, and the Cantabrian nobility then built town houses along the approach to it - so the whole village is one processional street lined with escutcheoned facades, wooden galleries and stone arcades, with almost nothing built after the eighteenth century. Sartre called it the prettiest village in Spain and the tourist board has never let anyone forget it. The local joke is that the name is three lies: it is not holy, not flat and not on the sea. It is also completely overrun between eleven and five, and close to deserted outside that, which is the entire practical content of this row: come early, come late, or stay the night in one of the manor houses on the street.

Calle del Canton, Santillana del Mar, Cantabria, 39330, Spain

NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED, and the village has none: the street is public and open at any hour, which is exactly why the early and late hours are the ones worth having. What has hours are the COLEGIATA and the REGINA COELI MUSEUM, which keep daytime hours with a LONG MIDDAY BREAK and Monday closures, and the Colegiata restricts sightseeing during services. ALTAMIRA fifteen minutes away keeps its own separate hours and closes Mondays.

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