Logbook · 6 places

What to see and do in Baltanás

What to see and do in Baltanás (El Cerrato, Palencia): 6 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 3 Monuments · 1 Curiosities · 1 Historical milestones

How far each place is from the centre of Baltanás

Towns near Baltanás

Spain › Castile and León › Palencia › El Cerrato › Baltanás

What to see and do in Baltanás

Baltanás
Village
Baltanás is the capital of the El Cerrato comarca, in the southeast of Palencia, settled in the former Valle de Atanasio, from which it takes its name; the Catholic Monarchs made it the head of the Merindad del Cerrato, a title it retains as the historic capital of the comarca. The site was inhabited by the Vaccaei, who left a hillfort on the cotarro del Castillo, and some historians identify it with the Eldana mentioned by Ptolemy. Its quarter of excavated wine cellars is declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection), and the municipality is home to the Museo del Cerrato Castellano and the hermitage of the Virgen de Revilla, whose carving is considered the oldest nativity figure in Spain. It has about 1225 inhabitants.
Wine cellar quarter of Baltanás
Monument
The complex of underground wine cellars of Baltanás, with 374 cellars spread over six superimposed levels, is the largest such complex in Spain and is listed as a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in the ethnological-site category. It is located on the cerro del Castillo, in a strategic position overlooking a fertile valley, which earlier housed a medieval castle and an early urban settlement; as the population moved down to the plain, the original settlement became a district of cellars on the upper part, in continuity with the present-day town through the church of San Millán. It is spread over two areas, that of the Castillo, with 305 cellars across 3.5 hectares, and that of Las Erillas, with 69 cellars in one hectare, already mentioned by the geographer Madoz in the 19th century.
Museum of el Cerrato Castellano
Monument
The Museo del Cerrato Castellano interprets the landscape, trades and traditions of the comarca in two buildings in the historic centre of Baltanás, a town that was head of the Merindad del Cerrato: the 18th-century Baroque palace-hospital of Santo Tomás, and the former Colegio La Milagrosa, joined in a single museum space reached through a modernist brick building on calle La Virgen. The palace, commissioned in 1898 by doña Plácida Solórzano as a hospital foundation, has a Baroque façade with a frieze of triglyphs and metopes and a porticoed courtyard where the New Year's Concert is held every year. The museum, with around 50,000 visitors between its opening and 2018, is also the gateway to the district of cellars dug into the hillside of the village.
Church of San Millán de Baltanás
Monument
Parish church situated on the Cerro del Castillo, the highest point of the historic centre of Baltanás, already documented in 1030, when King Sancho Garcés III donated his church of San Miguel, next to the town's old cellars. Rebuilt in 1585 to a design by Alonso de Tolosa and the work of the master Francisco del Río over an earlier building, its hall-plan interior is divided into three naves covered by ribbed vaulting, with a raised choir with a Plateresque parapet at the foot. The main altarpiece, from 1664 and Baroque in style, has at its centre a sculpture of San Millán surrounded by four paintings of his life by Felipe Gil de Mena, and is crowned by the Cristo del miserere, a Romanesque crucifix linked to a local legend. Its bell tower, completed in the late 17th century in ashlar stone, retains three of its six original bells.
Virgin of Revilla
Curiosity
The hermitage of Nuestra Señora de Revilla holds a Marian carving that local tradition regards as the oldest depiction of a nativity scene preserved in Spain, and which remains the object of a romería in the town. It is a sculpture from the late 13th century, around 1293 according to the historian Francisco José Gómez, which, together with an image of Saint Joseph, evokes the Flight into Egypt and is the patroness of Baltanás; it was created barely seventy years after the first nativity scene depicted by Saint Francis of Assisi at Greccio, in 1223. The carving was stolen from the hermitage on 9 September 1981 by the art thief Erik the Belgian; sold to an antiques dealer and then to a French art dealer, it was eventually seized by police. In the year 2000 it was exhibited in Madrid at the show Oro, incienso y mirra, dedicated to the Spanish nativity scene.
Battle of Baltanás
Historical milestone
In 1475, during the Castilian War of Succession, the Portuguese troops confronted here those of the Count of Benavente; Isabel the Catholic later visited the town to honour the fallen and granted it tax relief.