SANTILLANA Del Mar & COMILLAS
7/19/2025
We did a day trip to a couple little towns and a cave church. The day started out to be a bit of a poop show as we were supposed to do an e-bike tour but it was raining. We kept holding out to see if the rain would stop and even pushed the tour out a half hour hoping for the weather to clear. It didn’t; so we had to come up with a plan B on the fly… and ended up having a really great day.
We drove about 30 minutes west of Santander. First, we stopped at the Cave of Altamira which is an archeological museum regarding several caves discovered in the area and the art within the caves that dates back as far as 35,000 years ago! There is a museum and you can walk the grounds, but you can’t go into the actual cave as they continue to research it and don’t want stupid tourists tromping around in it! They have created a replica of the cave so you can get something of a feel for what the real cave and art are like.
All in all, I was admittedly a little disappointed. When we arrived, the wait to go into the “cave” was about 2 hours so we spent the time walking the grounds and going through the museum. But 2 hours was definitely a bit more time then was needed. Once it was our turn to go in, we walked through in about 15 minutes. It was kind of cool, but really quick for the amount of time we waited to get in. And to be fair, we had seen a similar cave in France, and it was amazing… so this one would have to be really impressive to compete!
Next stop was the small medieval town of Santillana del Mar which was just a few miles from the caves.
This town was SO stinking cute! Very old and all cobblestone streets. Anyone who has done the northern route of the Camino de Santiago might recognize this town as a stop along the way. The origins of the town are linked back to the 8th century when a monastery was built there. The town then grew around the monastery.
We had lunch and did a little shopping, then found a torture museum (gross right?). Let me just tell you, the number of sick, twisted, gruesome ways they devised to torture people is beyond comprehension. Grady could only stomach about half of it and went and sat outside while the rest of us continued through the museum. Emmy and I were both weirdly fascinated, but Brian was in to it! Like maybe we should all worry about a deep dark side! Just saying.
After Santillana, we drove about 15 minutes to the coolest coastal cliff church - Ermita de Santa Justa. It dates back to the 16th century and over time became a significant pilgrimage site on the Cantabrian coast. Above the chapel on the cliff are ruins of a fortification, the Torre de San Telmo, which was used for both signaling and for defense against pirates and Viking raids.
Our final stop of the day was Comillas – a town about 15 miles west right on the coast.
Our primary reason for going to Comillas was to see El Capricho de Gaudi, a whimsical summer house designed by Antoni Gaudí during his early years as an architect. It was built from 1883-1885 for a wealthy client, Maximo Diaz de Quijano and designed specifically around his preferences. Maximo only lived in the house for one week before he died!
Directly behind El Capricho is a beautiful chapel that was designed by Gaudi’s instructor, Joan Martorell, the most famous architect in Spain in the 19th century.
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