Village
Municipality of the comarca of Sierra de Alcaraz y Campo de Montiel, in the province of Albacete, conquered by Alfonso VIII in 1213 and governed by a fuero set down in writing in Castilian romance in 1296; onto its Renaissance Plaza Mayor, declared historic-artistic in 1945, look the church of la Santísima Trinidad, three arcaded exchange buildings and the towers of la Trinidad and el Tardón, the latter begun in 1555 and continued by Andrés de Vandelvira. Outside the built-up area is the shrine of Cortes, goal of several pilgrimages.
Monument
A Renaissance ensemble declared historic-artistic in 1945 and considered one of the most singular squares in Spain. Onto it face the church of La Santísima Trinidad, the Tardón and Trinidad towers and three arcaded exchange buildings.
Monument
The Torre del Tardón, also called the Council Tower or Clock Tower, stands on the plaza Mayor of Alcaraz, directly opposite the Torre de la Trinidad, and together with it forms the main icon of the town. A hexagonal tower housing the municipal clock, civil in character although built on the site of the vanished convent of Santo Domingo, it was begun in 1555 by Bartolomé Flores, and Andrés de Vandelvira, born in Alcaraz, worked on it until 1568, giving it his Mannerist style in the decoration and the division of its stages. It houses the municipal clock, the work of the local clockmaker Bautista, dated 1567, and a bell of 1447 that used to ring only now and then for solemn occasions, whence its name.
Monument
The Torre de la Trinidad is the bell tower of the church of the Santísima Trinidad, on the plaza Mayor of Alcaraz, a Gothic and Renaissance building of the 14th and 15th centuries declared a bien de interés cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in 1982. Sober and elegant, it has a first stage with blind Gothic windows and the rest of Renaissance design, crowned on the fourth stage by the belfry. Together with the neighbouring Torre del Tardón, standing a few metres away on the other side of the street, it forms one of the best-known images of the province of Albacete, most often reproduced in art and history guides; both towers share the rarity of being irregular prisms.
Monument
A church on the plaza Mayor of Alcaraz (Albacete), in Gothic and Renaissance style, built between the 14th and 15th centuries; the Gothic part must have been finished before 1492, since the central vault bears the arms of the Catholic Monarchs without the pomegranate. It is the municipality's only parish church and was declared a bien de interés cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in 1982. Its main doorway, with an ogee arch decorated with reliefs of knights and saints, leads into an interior of three naves with ribbed Gothic vaulting and four-pointed stars in the central nave. Also notable are the Renaissance cloister and the Torre de la Trinidad, sober in its lower Gothic stage and Renaissance in the rest, which together with the nearby Torre del Tardón forms one of the most widely reproduced images of the province.
Monument
An arcaded exchange building erected in 1518 by Juan de Chiberría, valued with the involvement of Juan de Baeza, one of the town's most notable Renaissance civic buildings.
Monument
The Portada del Alhorí, also called the Customs House doorway, stands on a side façade of the present-day town hall of Alcaraz, which was originally the city's alhorí or grain store. It is attributed to the Alcaraz-born architect Andrés de Vandelvira and dated to around 1530-1532; the municipal records note a payment to the stonemason Valdelvira that same year. It is a round-arched doorway with three archivolts decorated with candelieri and grotesques, flanked by columns bearing a frieze with the coat of arms of Alcaraz held up by angels. The whole is crowned by a porch with a large coat of arms of Charles V flanked by dragons, conceived as a Plateresque triumphal arch.
Monument
An 11th-century fortress dominating the town and controlling the pass of the Guadalmena valley, one of the strategic strongholds on the frontier between Castile and al-Andalus.
Monument
The church of San Miguel of Alcaraz (Albacete), today converted into a cultural centre for exhibitions and concerts, was founded soon after the Christian conquest of the town; according to the historian Padre Pareja, in 1227. Its main façade, a round arch flanked by pilasters and crowned by an entablature with a now-empty niche, opens onto a secluded little square off the calle Mayor and retains arrow-slit windows of military character. The interior, rectangular in plan with three naves in a Latin cross, houses the chapel of Rosario, or of the Galiano family, from the 15th century, with rich Gothic decoration of plant, animal and human motifs carved on the entrance arch. Outside rises a small prismatic tower with a four-sided bell gable.
Monument
The sanctuary of the patron saint of Alcaraz, whose legendary origin is linked to the councils Alfonso VIII is said to have held here before the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212. It is the destination of several pilgrimage festivals through the year.
Monument
Hydraulic work of the 16th and 17th centuries that supplied the town with water, today partly in ruins but still visible around the town centre. In 1493 the council of Alcaraz commissioned Juan de Cózar and Pedro de Cobo to build a number of fountains that gave rise to the project, although it suffered numerous financial problems. It rises in the río de la Mesta as an irrigation channel, crosses a tunnel of about a hundred metres beneath the spur of La Molata, then known as the contramina, and continues to the pass between the cerros of Santa Bárbara and Matacaballos, where the arches of the aqueduct once stood; of these only a few piers and one complete arch remain today.
Monument
Defensive tower of the 13th century preserved in the municipal district of Alcaraz, part of the watch system of the town's old alfoz. It stands beside the río Guadalmena, at a point that allowed control of passage through that stretch of territory dependent on Alcaraz.
Nature
The Garganta de Los Batanes is a gorge in the municipal district of Alcaraz (Sierra de Alcaraz y Campo de Montiel, Albacete), declared a micro-reserve and located about 3 km from the town centre. In the walls of its cliffs are preserved caves with Neolithic cave paintings, and beneath its steep crags the río de la Mesta and the río de El Escorial meet, giving rise to the río Guadalmena at the waterfall known as the Salto del Caballo.
Curiosity
The municipal district of Alcaraz has the distinction of splitting its waters among four river basins, the Guadalquivir, the Guadiana, the Júcar and the Segura, a condition shared by very few places in Spain. The río Guadalmena, a tributary of the Guadalquivir, rises within its territory; the Salinas de Pinilla lie along the course of the Guadiana; the río Jardín flows into the Júcar; and the arroyo de las Crucetas feeds into the río Mundo, itself a tributary of the Segura.
Curiosity
The great architect of the Spanish Renaissance, who designed Jaén cathedral and much of monumental Úbeda and Baeza, was born in Alcaraz and left his mark on the Alhorí doorway and the Torre del Tardón.
Activity
The Mercado Medieval de Alcaraz is held on the last weekend of April, when stalls, workshops and historical re-enactment shows fill the streets of the town's Renaissance quarter.
Activity
Patron saint festivities of Alcaraz in honour of the Virgin of Cortes, complemented by pilgrimages to the sanctuary on 1 May, 26 August and 8 September. The patron saint festivities proper are held from 4 to 9 September. The Real Monasterio y Santuario de Cortes stands in the area where local tradition places an old fortification, and the devotion goes back to an apparition of the Virgin which, according to tradition, took place on 1 May 1222 to the shepherd Francisco Álvarez.
Historical milestone
Alfonso VIII laid siege to the fortress from the Atalaya hill and on 23 May 1213 entered the stronghold in solemn procession; it remained a strategic Castilian bastion for the future conquest of the kingdom of Murcia and received a fuero modeled on that of Cuenca.
Historical milestone
The fuero granted after the conquest was set down in writing in Castilian romance in 1296, in an illuminated codex that ordered the life of the council and of its numerous hamlets; it is one of the capital pieces of local law in Albacete.
Food and drink
Sierra de Alcaraz is a protected geographical indication covering the country wines made with grapes from the municipalities of Alcaraz, El Ballestero, El Bonillo, Povedilla, Robledo and Viveros, in the province of Albacete; it was regulated in 2000 by the regional government of Castilla-La Mancha. The vineyards, planted on the foothills of the sierra, produce light reds with varieties such as cabernet sauvignon, merlot, bobal, monastrell and garnacha tinta, and fresh whites made with moravia dulce, chardonnay, chelva, malvar or pedro ximénez, among others. Distinct from the great denominations of La Mancha, this indication traditionally accompanies the game cuisine typical of the district, served at the September grape harvest.