Santo Domingo De La Calzada

Get on the N111 and travel around the modern city of Logroño. Between Logroño and Burgos is the rampart-encircled Santo Domingo de la Calzada , whose most impressive 12th-century cathedral has a live rooster and hen in residence—in commemoration of a miracle which supposedly occurred when a young pilgrim’s innocence was proved by the crowing of an already roasted cock. (They are replaced each year on May 12th.) On signs leading into town, you see the brief poem summing up the legend, which says, Santo Domingo de la Calzada/ cantó la gallina/ después de asada. Although the legend says a cock, the poem says a hen was his salvation. Maybe it just rhymed better. In any case, there is one of each in the cathedral. Its 18th-century belfry is famed as the prettiest in La Rioja.