Aoiz is a village located half an hour away from the city of Pamplona (Navarra, Spain) by car. It’s a really cute place, though not the most important one in terms of art or heritage in Navarra, but very, very interesting. So, what makes it this interesting? The will and enthusiasm of its people to promote and broadcast the heritage they have. A church with an impressive altarpiece, a very well conserved aristocratic palace, and a stunning medieval brigde surrounded by a beautiful landscape. All these things, and more, such as music, typical customs and traditional cusine have been preserved by the people of Aoiz who work for this goal with different associations. One of them, “Amigos del Puente” (Friends of the Bridge) restored the brigde some years ago.
It was the first week of October still nice weather, not too hot, not too cold, so it was a perfect day for walking and chatting with everybody, especially Mario, an old man from the village. He told us stories from the village and all of us had fun listening to him. It was a great moment of a real transmission of oral heritage from one generation to another.
We also have to thank Salva, the person in charge of the “Bilaketa association” who does a lot of work for the cultural development of the village. His help was key for our visit.
After visiting the church and the palace, we tasted the “costrada”, typical sweet from Aoiz that we enjoyed very much. We still had to walk to the bridge and to “Ermita San Roman” so such a break with costrada and coffee was very welcome. . We had the coffe at “ Casa de Cultura” and even during our coffee we had the opportunity to learn about the contemporary collection of art in this Casa de Cultura.
Art, heritage, friendly people , landscape and “costrada” ! If you come to Navarra please visit Aoiz!
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