Parque Natural del Moncayo
An hour's drive southwest of Zaragoza, the massif of Moncayo rises to 2,315 metres — the highest peak in the Iberian System — and the protected natural park around it offers everything from ancient beech forests and glacial cirques to Romanesque monasteries and sweeping views over two regions. It is the wild counterpoint to the city's urban pleasures, and Zaragozans treat it as their own back gard
Hiking through the beech forest
The most popular route is the Circular de Moncayo trail from the Santuario de Moncayo, a 14 km loop that climbs through the protected Hayedo de Moncayo — a cathedral-like beech forest that turns spectacular shades of copper and gold in October and November. The forest is one of the southernmost beech woodlands in Europe and has a primordial, almost fairytale atmosphere.
From the Collado Moncayo pass at around 2,000 m, the trail opens onto rocky moorland and the final push to the summit cross at 2,315 m, where on clear days you can see the Pyrenees to the north and the Meseta stretching south. The ascent from the car park is a solid 4–5 hour round trip; wear layers as wind chill can be fierce even in summer.
The monastery and the village of Tarazona
At the mountain's foot sits the Monasterio de Veruela, a 12th-century Cistercian abbey in a remarkable state of preservation. The Gothic cloister, with its slender paired columns and carved capitals, is one of Aragon's finest medieval spaces. The poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer convalesced here in the 1860s and wrote his celebrated Cartas desde mi celda (Letters from my Cell) about the landscape.
Pair the mountain with a stop in nearby Tarazona — a small city of mudejar towers, a cathedral with a magnificent 15th-century cloister, and a painted bullring that doubles as a unique open-air art gallery. The combination of mountain, monastery and mudejar town makes for one of the richest day trips from Zaragoza.
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