Northeastern angle: Beginning of the visit. St Ignatius, the author of the Book of the Spiritual Exercises and the Founder of the Society of Jesus, was born in this Tower-House in 1491 and converted in 1521. Today the Tower-House is set like a relic between a circular Basilica and the left-side wing of a College, but from ITS northeastern angle one can see two of its façades full and uncluttered.

What stands out most from the outside in the old Tower-House is its neat division into two super-imposed parts:

1- The lower half of solid stone, with hardly a gap, a real fortress built at the end of the 14th century by Iñigo’s great-great-grandfather Beltrán Ibáñez de Loyola.
2- The upper half of bricks, with numerous windows and four ornamental sentry-boxes at the four angles, adorned with festoons of mozarabic lacework: a palace rather than a military tower. It is a reconstruction done in 1460 by Iñigo’s grandfather Juan Pérez de Loyola on his return from the exile he was condemned to by the King of Castile.

A bronze group on the left of the door represents the arrival home of Iñigo de Loyola, seriously wounded in the defense of the castle of Pamplona. This happened at the end of June 1521.

He is a man undergoing a serious crisis: he does not known whether he will survive, whether he will be able to resume his military and court career. Much less does he know that, during his convalescence, God will bring him to question his general view of life and make him experience a profound conversion.

This conversion will have far-reaching consequences in the history of the Church and make this Tower-House into the Holy House of Loyola.

Loyola’s coat of arms over the door shows a kettle hanging from chains and flanked by two rampant wolves.

In Iñigo’s time, both the lineage and the coat of arms were double:
- that of Oñaz (seven red bands on a golden camp).
- that of Loyola (the kettle, the chains and the wolves on a silver camp).