Why go
The medieval story explains why the oldest urban core faces both the harbour and the river mouth. It also complicates a simple “Basque fishing town” picture: links to Navarre, Castile, Bayonne and other Atlantic ports all influenced the town before later fires changed its buildings.
The full story
A document from 1014 refers to the monastery of Saint Sebastian in the wider area. By 1181, Sancho VI of Navarre had granted the town a charter, or fuero, that set out its rights and helped establish it as a port. Castile took the town in 1200, although the harbour retained links with Navarre. Gascon-speaking settlers from Bayonne and beyond became part of its commercial life; their presence endured for centuries. A walled town developed at the foot of Urgull, a position that joined a usable harbour to a defensible hill. A major fire in 1489 destroyed much of the timber-built settlement. Rebuilding increasingly in stone changed what residents would have seen, even before the far more destructive events of 1813. The street pattern beneath Urgull still helps locate this medieval core, though few buildings visible today date from that period.