The Altanera is located in the center of Barniedo de la Reina, small and charming town belonging to the Land of the Queen, a geographical demarcation that covers the lands of nine towns, whose municipality is Boca de Huérgano. It forms part of the Camino de Santiago del Norte: Vadiniense Route, which some travelers decide to undertake when they reach the Cantabrian town of San Vicente de la Barquera.

Our house dates from the late nineteenth century, and has been a rehabilitation project. After a major renovation, it has been adapted to the current use and comfort while preserving the structural elements, maintaining the style and personality of its inception.

The village, Barniedo de la Reina, preserves a number of typical houses of the mountain, and even in some you can see the roof with horn roof, vegetable cover equal to that used in the palms of Bierzo, Ancares or Mountain . The church has a Romanesque portal of the XIII century, of half a point with several archivolts. It conserves a Gothic chapel, whose 16th century altarpiece was taken to the Diocesan Museum of León. In the vault of the Main Chapel are painted the four evangelists (fourteenth century).

Through Barniedo you can access the valley of Valponguero, where the prairie, the oak forest and the water abound, limiting in the high zone with the province of Palencia. It is also an access valley for the culmination of ascents to important peaks in the area: Pico Murcia, Espiguete, Pico Cuartas. The municipality of Boca de Huérgano is surrounded by mountains that exceed 2,000 m in altitude, comprising an area of ​​276.1 km2 from the northeastern tip of the province of León, bounded on the east by the Cantabrian region of La Liébana and La Montaña Palentina, to the north with Valdeón and the powerful Picos de Europa, to the west with Riaño and Burón, and to the south with Prioro.

The Land of the Queen, crossed by the river Yuso or Esla, according to different opinions, administratively includes the towns included in the municipality of Boca de Huérgano. Four mountain passes communicate the Tierra de la Reina with the bordering regions: the ports of Las Portillas (1.275 m.) And Picones (1. 310 m.) Communicate with the Palencia region of Guardo; the port of Pandetrave (1,562 m.) gives access to the Valdeón Valley; and the port of San Glorio (1.609 m.), through the national road 621, which leads to Santander, is the limit with the lands of La Liébana, belonging to Cantabria.

We recommend a walk through the towns that comprise the Land of the Queen. In them, samples of popular architecture in stone and wood are still standing. Next to the houses, many of them equipped with corridors, were built haystacks, stables, chicken coops, woodcutters and furnaces. Associated to the houses rose the granaries of leonine style, small, with roofs in their majority to two waters and horizontal boards.

You can see some specimens in several villages in the area, as well as mills and the fullan of Espejos de la Reina, the only one that is preserved in these mountain valleys. In Boca de Huérgano we can appreciate the change of image of the remains of the palace of the Tovar.