A mountain sanctuary in the Picos de Europa of Asturias, site of Pelayo's victory around 722 and, ever since, the symbolic birthplace of the Reconquista.
Covadonga lies in a steep valley of the Picos de Europa in eastern Asturias, where a cave set in the cliff face has been a place of veneration since the early Middle Ages. It takes its name and its whole significance from the battle fought nearby around 722, when Pelayo's rebels turned back an Umayyad expedition.
The site became the sacred origin-point of the Asturian monarchy and, in later tradition, of the Christian recovery of Iberia. Pelayo was buried in the Holy Cave, and the shrine of Our Lady of Covadonga grew into one of the principal pilgrimage centres of northern Spain.
The Holy Cave (Santa Cueva) holds a chapel and the tombs traditionally identified as those of Pelayo and his kin, above a waterfall that feeds the valley below. Nearby the great neo-Romanesque Basilica of Santa María la Real de Covadonga was built in the late nineteenth century as the mountain became a national shrine.
The high mountain lakes above the sanctuary, Enol and Ercina, and the surrounding peaks form the core of what is now a national park, so the place that made occupation impossible in the eighth century remains wild and defensible-looking today.