Basque Architecture

The traditional Basque farmstead, the baserri, is found across the Atlantic Basque country but almost absent from the central areas of Alava and Navarre. The earliest examples were built entirely in timber, and from the fifteenth century the ground floor began to be framed in stone, reserving timber for the upper floors; roof slopes were gentler in the lowlands and steeper in Pyrenean valleys to shed snow, and the house held such cultural weight that it was traditionally inherited by the eldest child. Religious and civic architecture flourished along the Ways of Saint James from the twelfth century, with Romanesque and then Gothic styles dominating through the fifteenth century in central and southern Alava and Navarre, and in the late nineteenth century a neo-Basque style emerged blending the traditional farmhouse with contemporary European influences, as in the Villa Arnaga at Cambo-les-Bains.