Picked by our team
Towns worth discovering along the Camino de Santiago, chosen by our team. Open one to see its history and sights, and where to stay.
52 towns on the Camino del Norte
View on the mapGüemes is a small village in the Cantabrian hinterland and, for many pilgrims, the most important evening on the Camino del Norte. A priest opened his family home here, and it became one of the largest albergues on the route, run by volunteers. Dinner and breakfast are shared, and you decide the price yourself.
Camino del NorteHondarribia is the most beautiful detour at the start of the Camino del Norte: a walled old town at the mouth of the Bidasoa, about a kilometre and a half from the Way as the crow flies. The Camino only skirts the outskirts and the little chapel of Santiagotxo. If you arrive by boat from Hendaye or have an evening to spare, go up.
Camino del NorteIrún is the threshold of the Camino del Norte: a border town on the Bidasoa, 850.7 kilometres from Santiago. The donation-based hostel run by the local St James association took in 4,880 pilgrims between February and July 2025 alone. Here you pick up your credencial and a pilgrim blessing before the first stage leads you over Guadalupe and Jaizkibel to San Sebastián.
Camino del NorteCamino Vasco del Interior+1Laredo was the port of great farewells: here Isabella the Catholic saw two of her daughters off to foreign lands, and here Charles V came ashore in 1556 on his way to die at Yuste. For you, beyond the old town lie a good four kilometres of beach, and at its end a small boat crosses to Santoña.
Camino del NorteLezama is the last night in the countryside before Bilbao: a village in the Asúa valley with a medieval tower house and a donation-based pilgrim hostel in the community centre. If you split the 32 kilometres from Gernika, you sleep here and reach the city by the next midday after 12.7 kilometres.
Camino del NorteLlanes is the harbour town the Camino del Norte heads for after a day along the rocky coast: walls and a round tower from the 13th century, a basilica with a relief of Saint James and pilgrims, colourful cubes on the harbour wall. A rest day is worth it here, and there are several hostels.
Camino del NorteLourenzá lies in a valley below the high plateau, 166.3 kilometres before Santiago, and lives around a 10th-century monastery. Its Baroque façade is the work of the architect who went on to design the Obradoiro façade in Santiago. For many a stage town after 27.2 kilometres from Ribadeo, for others just a stop before Mondoñedo.
Camino del NorteLuarca is the white fishing town on the west coast of Asturias: a harbour between two headlands, on one of them a cemetery above the cliffs where the Nobel laureate Severo Ochoa is buried. 252.7 kilometres before Santiago, a short day ends here. An afternoon is enough, but an evening at the harbour belongs to it.
Camino del NorteMarkina-Xemein is the reward after one of the hardest stages in the Basque Country: a small town in the Artibai valley with a medieval street plan, a pilgrim hostel behind the Carmelite convent and a hexagonal chapel built around three huge boulders. Whoever wants to marry walks under them three times.
Camino del NorteTop rated
The stays pilgrims rate highest right now, across every Camino.
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