Roncesvalles

Roncesvalles, known in Basque as Orreaga, lies in the Pyrenees of Navarre near the route across the mountains from France. Its collegiate church of Santa María and former pilgrims' hospice, built around the end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth centuries, became an important resting place on the French Way to Santiago de Compostela. In 1439 the prior of Roncesvalles led a Navarrese embassy negotiating a royal marriage in Burgundy. The pass is also associated with the defeat of Charlemagne's rearguard by Basque forces in 778, remembered in the story of Roland. Much later, fighting took place in the area during the Peninsular War in 1813. Pilgrimage and warfare alike made this mountain crossing important beyond its small settlement.