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What to see and do in El Barco de Ávila

What to see and do in El Barco de Ávila (Ávila, Ávila): 4 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 1 Historical milestones · 1 Food and drink

Towns near El Barco de Ávila

Spain › Castile and León › Ávila › Ávila › El Barco de Ávila

What to see and do in El Barco de Ávila

El Barco de Ávila
Village
El Barco de Ávila is the chief town of the Alto Tormes, with 2,308 inhabitants, in the province of Ávila. The Vettones began their castro on the hill overlooking the río, and the Arab occupation left its mark in freshwater wells and in place names such as Navamorisca or Navamures. The village, together with Piedrahíta, El Mirón, La Horcajada and Bohoyo, belonged to the Señorío de Valdecorneja, of the Casa de los Álvarez de Toledo, dukes of Alba, from whose castle the río is overlooked. In nearby Navarregadilla the clergyman Pedro de la Gasca was born, sent in 1546 to pacify Peru after the death of the first viceroy, and founder of the city of La Paz. El Barco preserves walls, the Puerta del Ahorcado and the church of the Assumption; the ensemble was declared historic in 2017.
Castle of Valdecorneja y puente románico
Monument
The castle was raised in the 12th century over a Vettonian castro razed by the Romans and was rebuilt in the 14th. At its foot the bridge over the Tormes crosses the river with eight unequal arches; it had to be rebuilt in the 19th century after the destruction of the Napoleonic war.
Charles V in El Barco
Historical milestone
The emperor Carlos V, already abdicated and on his way to his retirement in Extremadura, stopped two days in the town on 10 and 11 November 1556. His passage was engraved in the memory of a village used to seeing the court of Castile file over its bridge.
The beans of El Barco de Ávila
Food and drink
The beans of El Barco de Ávila are dried beans, generally white and large, grown in the fields of El Barco de Ávila, in the southwest of the province of Ávila, on valley terraces sheltered from cold winds. Protected by an order of 5 January 1989, they were the first Spanish legume recognised with a protected geographical indication, even before the Asturian faba, and both have been listed in the EU register since 1996. There are seven varieties -round white, kidney white, long purple, round purple, arrocina, flattened and the judión of El Barco- with a grain so large that only around forty fit in a hundred grams, an approximate serving for one person. They are marketed in the primera and extra grades.