Village
Teruel is the capital of the province of the same name, in southern Aragon, located at about 915 m in altitude at the confluence of the Alfambra and Guadalaviar rivers, which downstream becomes known as the Turia. With 36,655 inhabitants (INE 2025), it is the least populated provincial capital in Spain, and its climate is characterised by very cold winters and mild, dry summers. It preserves notable Mudejar heritage, partly recognised by Unesco as a World Heritage Site: notable are the church of Santa María, the diocese's cathedral, and the towers of El Salvador, San Martín and San Pedro, alongside the church of the latter name. Other attractions include the mausoleum of the Amantes de Teruel, the figure of El Torico and the Dinópolis palaeontological centre.
Monument
The cathedral of Santa María de Teruel is a Mudejar-style church located on the Plaza de la Catedral. Construction began in 1171 on an earlier Romanesque building and work continued until 1587, making it one of only two Spanish cathedrals built in this style. Its tower, from 1257, is one of the oldest in Spanish Mudejar architecture, with three decorated tiers; the coffered ceiling of the central nave, dating from around 1265 and 32 metres long, is known as the Sistine Chapel of Mudejar art; and the lantern tower, from 1538, crowns the whole. The south façade, in Neo-Mudejar style, dates from 1909 and is the work of the architect Pablo Monguió. The tower, the ceiling and the lantern tower have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986, with the listing extended in 2001.
Monument
The tower of San Pedro is the bell tower of the church of San Pedro in Teruel and the oldest example of Teruel's Mudejar style, built in the last third of the thirteenth century and attached to the foot of the original church, which predated the present building; construction of the present church began in 1392 on the site of a Franciscan convent founded in 1220. The church, declared a World Heritage Site, kept in one of its side chapels the mummies of the Lovers of Teruel, discovered in 1555; since 2005 the Mausoleum of the Lovers, an adjoining museum space, can be visited alongside it. Its interior was decorated between 1896 and 1902 in Neo-Mudejar Modernista style by Pablo Monguió Segura and Salvador Gisbert, who also built a new cloister.
Monument
Gate-tower from the first quarter of the 14th century that spanned the street with a vaulted passage at its foot. It is about forty metres high, and its slightly truncated-pyramidal floor plan narrows from 9.20 metres at the base to 8.90 by 7.90 metres at the top. It is the protagonist of the legend of Zoraida, which pitted the master builders Abdalá and Omar against each other.
Monument
The tower of San Martín stands on the Plaza de Pérez Prado, facing the Calle de los Amantes, and is part of the Mudejar ensemble of Teruel declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1986. It was built between 1315 and 1316, during the tenure of magistrate Juan de Valacloche, and is the oldest of the city's Mudejar towers. Problems with damp and the collapse of its base made it necessary to reinforce it between 1549 and 1551 with an ashlar buttress, the work of the French architect Pierres Vedel. It is a brick gate-tower with glazed ceramic ornamentation, beneath which runs the Cuesta de la Andaquilla, and it imitates the structure of an Almohad minaret, with two concentric square towers between which the staircases are set. It was declared a National Monument in 1911.
Monument
The Mausoleum of the Lovers of Teruel houses the alabaster sculptures of Diego and Isabel, protagonists of the legendary thirteenth-century Teruel love story between Isabel de Segura, daughter of a wealthy merchant, and Diego Martínez de Marcilla, a young man without fortune whom she promised to wait for while he set off to seek his fortune in the Reconquista. According to the legend, Diego returned wealthy on the very day that Isabel, believing him dead, was marrying another suitor, and he died that night after asking her for one last kiss, which she, faithful to her husband, refused him. Since 1996 Teruel has re-enacted every year, in theatrical form, the Wedding of Isabel de Segura as a tribute to this tradition.
Activity
The festival of the Wedding of Isabel de Segura re-enacts, in theatrical form, in the streets of Teruel, the legend of the Lovers of Teruel. It is held on the weekend coinciding with the third Friday of February, close to Saint Valentine's Day, and runs from Thursday to Sunday with more than sixty events: the announcement of the false death of Diego de Marcilla, the wedding of Isabel de Segura to Pedro de Azagra, Diego's return to see her again, his death on discovering her married and hers during his funeral, ending with the final kiss in the funeral procession. Hundreds of performers and thousands of residents of Teruel and tourists dress in early-medieval costume, and a medieval market is also set up. The re-enactment began in 1997 and was declared a Festival of International Tourist Interest in 2025.
Curiosity
The legend of the Lovers of Teruel tells the love story between Isabel de Segura, daughter of a wealthy merchant, and Diego de Marcilla, a young man of Teruel without fortune, set in the Teruel of the thirteenth century. Diego set off to seek his fortune in the Reconquista with the promise of marrying Isabel on his return, but he arrived on the very day that she, believing him dead, was marrying another man; that night, on asking her for a kiss which she refused him out of loyalty to her husband, Diego died of love before her eyes. Since 1996 Teruel has held the theatrical medieval re-enactment of the Wedding of Isabel de Segura, in memory of the tradition, and the city preserves the Mausoleum of the Lovers, one of its main tourist attractions.
Historical milestone
On 1 October 1171 Alfonso II of Aragon took the enclave of Tirwal to reinforce the southern frontier of the kingdom against the Muslim threat from Valencia. On that site the new city of Teruel was raised.
Historical milestone
Granted in 1177, the fuero set out the rights of the settlers and ordered urban life around the plaza Mayor, today plaza del Torico. It was one of the most complete legal texts of the Aragonese frontier and served as a model for other villas.
Historical milestone
The Acueducto de los Arcos, or Traída de las Aguas, crosses the ravine that bordered the city of Teruel to the northeast and is the most important engineering work of the Teruel Renaissance. The works, aimed at improving the water supply, began in 1537 and resumed in 1551 under the French architect Quinto Pierres Bedel, who designed Los Arcos — classically inspired, with two levels, an upper one of six arches carrying the water and a lower one of two arches serving as a pedestrian passage — to overcome the last great topographical obstacle on the route. Completed in 1554, the water reached the fountain in the Plaza Mayor in 1558, after laying a conduit of more than 4,000 metres with thousands of ceramic pipes. It has been a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) with monument status since 2007.
Historical milestone
A series of military operations fought between 15 December 1937 and 22 February 1938 in Teruel and its surroundings, during the Spanish Civil War. The Ejército Popular de la República surrounded the city and, despite the resistance of the rebel garrison and the harsh cold, took it in early January 1938, making it the only provincial capital captured by the republicans in the whole war. In February the Francoist army overwhelmed the republican flanks and inflicted a heavy defeat on them in the Alfambra area, opening the way to retake the city on 22 February. Extreme cold and bombing destroyed much of the town centre, and the attrition of the battle hit the republican troops especially hard.
Historical milestone
Born in Teruel in 1871 and dead in 1929, Segundo de Chomón developed techniques of trick photography, colouring and animation that placed him among the great innovators of European silent cinema. He worked for Pathé in Paris and for the Italian industry.
Activity
The capital hosts each autumn a fair devoted to ham with designation of origin and to the rest of the certified foods of the province. It brings together drying sheds, livestock farmers and producers, with carvers and tastings open to the public.
Food and drink
Thin flatbread of bread dough covered with strips of roasted pepper and sardine or cod, baked in a bakery oven. It is sold by the piece as a mid-morning meal and is one of the most deeply rooted savoury snacks of the city and its surroundings.