Logbook · 4 places

What to see and do in Cistierna

What to see and do in Cistierna (La Montaña de Riaño, León): 4 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 2 Monuments · 1 Nature

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Spain › Castile and León › León › La Montaña de Riaño › Cistierna

What to see and do in Cistierna

Cistierna
Village
Cistierna is a town in the province of León, in the eastern León mountains, crossed from north to south by the río Esla, beneath the Peñacorada massif, which reaches 1,835 metres. Its name derives from the Latin cisterna, a vessel for storing water. Already in Roman times, after the conquest of the Astur city of Lancia in 25 BC, washing plants for the ore extracted in nearby Lois and Anciles were set up here, making use of the road that climbed alongside the Esla towards Asturias; in the Middle Ages numerous monasteries were built in the town and its region, most of them now gone. It later grew with coal mining and the railway until the mines closed in 1991, and since 2009 it has had a railway museum. It has around 2,860 inhabitants.
Monastery of San Guillermo de Peñacorada
Monument
Remains of the medieval monastery at the foot of the Peñacorada massif, in the municipality of Cistierna (León), founded in the 11th century as one of many monastic houses through which the lay aristocracy controlled the sacred sites of the Kingdom of León. It is documented from that century as Santa María de los Valles; it was not until 1289 that Sancho IV gave it the name San Guillermo and placed it under the authority of the monastery of Sahagún. Today barely any remains survive, due to neglect and plunder, although an excavation in 1915 found in the presbytery bones attributed to a hermit identified with the saint, greatly venerated in Cistierna: in a cave on the outskirts his image rests, to which every 28 May a pilgrimage climbs up to the hermitage built on the same spot.
Massif of Peñacorada
Nature
A limestone barrier dominating the municipality with elevations between 1,600 and 1,835 metres and with the Pico Moro reaching 1,779; the Esla skirts it from north to south on its way to the León plain.
Museum of el Ferrocarril de Cistierna
Monument
Opened in July 2009 in the old warehouse of the narrow-gauge line, it gathers the memory of the coal railway that sustained the valley's economy from the nineteenth century until the mining decline of 1991.