Where to Stay in Oviedo, Principality of Asturias

What is Oviedo known for?

Oviedo is known for its pre-Romanesque churches, the Cámara Santa of its cathedral, and the cider poured along Calle Gascona. The stone predates Romanesque Europe. Santa María del Naranco and San Miguel de Lillo were raised on the hillside for Ramiro I before the year 850, and San Julián de los Prados still carries the painted walls Alfonso II ordered.

The Camino Primitivo leaves from the cathedral square.

What are the main landmarks in Oviedo?

Oviedo carries its oldest stone on the slope of Monte Naranco, at Santa María del Naranco and San Miguel de Lillo. San Julián de los Prados stands lower down. In the old town the Catedral de San Salvador rises over the square, its Cámara Santa holding the Cruz de la Victoria, and San Tirso, San Isidoro, and the Monastery of San Pelayo fill the streets behind.

The Museo de Bellas Artes de Asturias, the Palacio de los Condes de Toreno, and the Mafalda statue in the Campo de San Francisco round out the walk. Fragments of the city walls survive.

What is the history of Oviedo?

Oviedo began with a monastery on a bare hill. Two monks, Máximo and Fromestano, raised a church to San Vicente there in the eighth century, and a generation later Alfonso II made the place the seat of the Asturian kingdom. That court built in stone.

San Julián de los Prados went up with its walls painted in Roman fashion, Ramiro I added Santa María del Naranco and San Miguel de Lillo on the Naranco slope, and the Cámara Santa was cut to hold the relics carried out of Toledo. The capital moved to León. Oviedo stayed a pilgrim town after that, the start of the Camino Primitivo and the place where the Cruz de los Ángeles and the Cruz de la Victoria were kept.

The university opened in 1608. Fernando de Valdés Salas endowed it, and its lecture rooms carried the Asturian enlightenment through the following centuries until fire gutted the building in the civil war. Coal and steel came next.

The Asturian mines filled the valleys south and east, and Oviedo took the administration rather than the furnaces, which left it the government town of the Principality of Asturias while Gijón and Avilés took the industry. The pilgrims still leave from the cathedral.

Where is Oviedo?

Oviedo sits in a basin between Monte Naranco and the ridges south of it, inland from the Bay of Biscay in central Asturias. The land is all slope. Green valleys of the Nalón and the Caudal cut south toward the coal country, the Cordillera Cantábrica walls off León beyond them, and the coast lies a short run north past Gijón.

Meadow reaches the last streets.

What is the climate of Oviedo?

The Bay of Biscay keeps Oviedo wet and mild through most of the year. Atlantic fronts run in over the coast and pile against the Cordillera Cantábrica, so the orbayu drifts across the basin in a fine grey drizzle that soaks without ever quite raining. Summer is cool and short.

August rarely turns oppressive, snow settles on the Naranco pastures more often than on the streets, and the hills stay green because the rain never really stops. Waterproofs earn their keep.

How do you get to Oviedo?

Oviedo lies on the A-66 where it comes down from the Pajares pass into Asturias. That road and the AP-66 carry traffic from León, while the A-8 runs east and west along the coast and the Y-shaped motorway ties the city to Gijón and Avilés in twenty minutes each. Trains use the Estación del Norte.

Renfe runs south to León and Madrid through the Pajares tunnels, the narrow-gauge FEVE lines work the coast and the mining valleys, and Asturias Airport sits west of the city near Avilés.