The Most Beautiful Places in Aragon
8 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in Aragon are Albarracín, Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park and Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar. The list covers 8 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
Aragon runs from the high Pyrenees in the north, through the dry valley of the Ebro, to the rough uplands of Teruel in the south. Once an independent kingdom whose crown came to rule across the Mediterranean, it kept a strong medieval identity, and its Muslim and Christian builders met in Mudéjar architecture of brick and glazed tile. The landscape is just as varied: glacial canyons, conglomerate towers rising from the plain, and red-walled towns on rocky spurs.
The mountains come first. Ordesa y Monte Perdido, among the oldest national parks in Spain, is a limestone canyon with walls hundreds of metres high under the Pyrenean peaks. Further south, the Mallos de Riglos rise straight out of the foothills as reddish towers of conglomerate, a famous climbing ground. Albarracín, with its pink-ochre houses and long ramparts climbing the hillside, is often called one of the most beautiful villages in Spain.
The kingdom left its mark in stone. Loarre Castle, an eleventh-century Romanesque fortress on a ridge, is one of the best preserved castles of its age in Europe. The Royal Monastery of San Juan de la Peña is built beneath an overhanging cliff, its cloister sheltered by the rock itself. In Zaragoza, the Aljafería palace preserves the stucco arches of an eleventh-century Islamic court, and the Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar, crowned with tiled domes, holds frescoes by the young Goya. Canfranc International Station, opened in 1928 in a Pyrenean valley, completes the list with a giant of the railway age.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Albarracín | Most beautiful village | |
| 2 | Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park | National park | ✓ |
| 3 | Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar | Cathedral | |
| 4 | Aljafería | Palace | ✓ |
| 5 | Royal Monastery of San Juan de la Peña | Abbey | |
| 6 | Loarre Castle | Castle | |
| 7 | Mallos de Riglos | Rock formation | |
| 8 | Canfranc International Station | Railway station |
01 Albarracín
Spain40.405° N 1.444° W
Image by meipakk from Pixabay Albarracín seems to grow out of the rock it stands on. The old town clings to a steep spur almost entirely wrapped by a meander of the Guadalaviar River, its houses stacked along narrow, sloping lanes and some of them hanging over the gorge.
Did you know? An alternative theory derives the name not from the Banu Razin but from Celtic words for mountain and vineyard.
02 Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park
Parque Nacional de Ordesa y Monte Perdido
Spain42.672° N 0.056° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by vilanchelo from Pixabay Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park lies on the Spanish side of the central Pyrenees in the province of Huesca, and it is a landscape made of limestone.
Did you know? Created by royal decree on 16 August 1918, Ordesa was the second national park ever declared in Spain.
03 Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar
Catedral-Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Zaragoza
Spain · 1.2 km from Zaragoza41.657° N 0.878° W
Image by AG-Pics from Pixabay Few churches announce themselves like the Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar: a long rectangular block beside the Ebro, crowned by eleven domes and pinned at the corners by four towers. The building is Baroque, begun in 1681 under Charles II and only finished in 1872 when the main dome and last spire were completed.
Did you know? The column is usually draped in a cloth mantle and is shown bare only on the 2nd, 12th and 20th of each month.
04 Aljafería
Spain · 0.9 km from Zaragoza41.656° N 0.897° W
- UNESCO World Heritage
Image by Pixels4Free from Pixabay The Aljafería is the finest surviving building from the taifa kingdoms, the patchwork of Muslim states that followed the break-up of the Caliphate of Córdoba. It was raised in Zaragoza for Ahmad al-Muqtadir of the Banu Hud dynasty and largely finished between 1065 and 1081.
Did you know? Hidden in the plaster filigree is a carved bird, a rare animal figure in Islamic ornament, perhaps a symbol of the king himself.
05 Royal Monastery of San Juan de la Peña
Real Monasterio de San Juan de la Peña
Spain42.508° N 0.673° W
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0 San Juan de la Peña is a monastery built beneath a cliff: an enormous overhang of rock forms the roof over its Romanesque cloister, so that the carved arcades stand in permanent shade with the mountain hanging directly above them. The name means Saint John of the Rock.
Did you know? In 1399 King Martin I had to ask the abbot three times before the monks handed over the chalice revered as the Holy Grail.
06 Loarre Castle
Castillo de Loarre
Spain42.326° N 0.612° W
Image by matressa_ from Pixabay Loarre is often called the best-preserved Romanesque castle in Europe, and standing below it you understand why the claim sticks.
Did you know? The keep, about 22 metres tall with five floors, stood apart from the castle and was reached only by a drawbridge.
07 Mallos de Riglos
Spain42.351° N 0.724° W
Image by solercollell from Pixabay Above the tiny village of Riglos in Aragon, a wall of rust-red rock towers rise straight out of the hillside, so vertical and so close together that they look like a giant stone organ.
Did you know? The narrow, water-cut clefts between the smaller towers are called 'os galochos' in Aragonese, and each mallo has its own.
08 Canfranc International Station
Estación Internacional de Canfranc
Spain42.751° N 0.514° W
Marc Celeiro · CC BY-SA 4.0 Canfranc International station is a palace built for a frontier that barely needed it. It stands in a narrow valley of the Spanish Pyrenees, beside the southern mouth of the Somport rail tunnel that runs under the mountains into France.
Did you know? Its role as a meeting point for agents and smugglers earned Canfranc the nickname "Casablanca of the Pyrenees" during the Second World War.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in Aragon?
- On our list, Albarracín ranks first, followed by Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park and Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar.
- What is Mudéjar architecture?
- Mudéjar is the style created by Muslim craftsmen working under Christian rule in medieval Spain, combining Islamic decoration with Christian building types. The Mudéjar architecture of Aragon, especially its brick and tile towers in Teruel and Zaragoza, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
- Why is Canfranc station so large?
- It was built as an international station on the railway through the Pyrenees between Spain and France, with space for the customs and services of both countries. It opened in 1928, and traffic across the border stopped in 1970 after a bridge collapsed on the French side.
- Which film was shot at Loarre Castle?
- Ridley Scott filmed scenes of Kingdom of Heaven (2005) at Loarre Castle, its eleventh-century walls serving as a medieval fortress on screen.
- What kinds of places are there to see in Aragon?
- In our collection, the places in Aragon are most often castles (2), rock formations (1), national parks (1) and nature sanctuaries (1).
- How many places are on this list in Aragon?
- The list covers 8 places.