Castillo de Santa Ana, Castro Urdiales

The castle of Santa Ana is a fortress located on a rocky promontory in Castro-Urdiales, on a peninsula where there is also the fortified church Sta. Mª de la Asunción, the ruins of another previous church, and the hermitage of Santa Ana, built as a watchtower, connected to the castle by a bridge. The complex has very good views of the sea, the port and the town. Inside the enclosure a lighthouse was built in 1853, whose machinery occupied the chapel. It is one of the best preserved castles in northern Spain.

It has a pentagonal ground plan with cylindrical corner towers 15 metres high, which protect a rectangular enclosure measuring 22.75 x 12.35 metres; inside this, in turn, there is a hall measuring 17 x 7 metres covered by a barrel vault. One of the cylinders is in fact the covering of a triangular space that extends from the inner rectangle towards the villa, while the other four act as buttresses of the vault of the living space. Another defence, crenellated and lower, is visible in the part of the lighthouse. It has no openings at all, so that the defence could only be made from the towers. It is made of cyclopean stones made with lime. The castle, as well as the citadel, was protected by a wall between 6 and 7 meters high, which preserves a small canvas very deteriorated with the original battlements and merlons.

Access is from the sea side, through a small gate.