Near the Spanish border, the Pays Basque invites you to discover rare landscapes, authentic traditions and wishes to share its emotion with you.
From the soaring summits of the western Pyrénées to the beaches washed by the Atlantic Ocean, the Pays Basque is a land of contrasts. Its history began in the deepest part of the Haute-Soule canyons, where the steep slopes of the Kakueta gorges reveal the wild depths of the land. As with the Holtzarte gorges of Ehujarre, the turbulent waters of the mountain streams run down the mountains with perseverance, cutting a path through the lavish vegetation.
From the Pyrénées mountains to the Atlantic coast, the landscape tells the tale of a community of shepherds who shaped the Pays Basque by clearing the pasture. Ancient funeral monuments, dolmens and tumulus, are evidence of the presence of an extremely well organised agro-pastoral civilisation as of the end of the Neolithic era, 4,500 years ago. But the presence of humans goes back a lot further and the existence of numerous cave-dwellings are proof. Not far from Hasparren, at the caves of Izturitze, Oxozelaia and Erberua, the discovery of prehistoric objects, rock paintings and bones confirm Mans' presence 65,000 years ago. At the Sare cave, we can find carved flints that date back to the Aurignacian (30,000 years ago).
To cross the Pyrénées you have to go through the Pays Basque. Many invaders passed through including Celts, Romans, Visigoths, Normans, Franks and Muslims. Next, royal armies from Spain and France crossed this land, sometimes devastating it but often fearful of it. Tite-Live worryingly spoke of the "Saltus Vasconum", the Basque forest. The Romans had to protect themselves when they crossed the Pyrénées, in particular along the path linking Bordeaux to the Asturias, as the entrenched camp of Saint-Jean-le-Vieux testifies. The land of the Vascons (Basques) then covered a vast region. In the 9th century it was situated between the south of the Garonne and the Ebre.
A defensive mood pervaded and a Basque kingdom emerged with Pamplona as its capital: the kingdom of Navarre. Plagued by the lust of its powerful neighbours, Franks, Muslims and later Castilians, it disappeared in the 16th century. Paix des Pyrénées (Peace in the Pyrénées) was ratified in 1659 by representatives of the kings of France and Spain on the Ile des Faisans (Pheasants' island) in Hendaye and then confirmed by the marriage of Louis XIV with the Infanta Marie-Thérèse in Saint-Jean-de-Luz in 1660, fixing a border along the length of the Pyrénées.
