Logbook · 2 places

What to see and do in Castillejo de Martín Viejo

What to see and do in Castillejo de Martín Viejo (Ciudad Rodrigo, Salamanca): 2 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 1 Monuments

How far each place is from the centre of Castillejo de Martín Viejo

Siega Verde 1.3 km

Towns near Castillejo de Martín Viejo

Spain › Castile and León › Salamanca › Ciudad Rodrigo › Castillejo de Martín Viejo

What to see and do in Castillejo de Martín Viejo

Castillejo de Martín Viejo
Village
Castillejo de Martín Viejo is a municipality of about 193 inhabitants in western Salamanca, in the comarca of Ciudad Rodrigo and the sub-comarca of the Campo de Argañán. On its territory, above the Águeda river, lies Siega Verde, one of the largest open-air Palaeolithic rock art complexes in Europe, declared a World Heritage Site together with the Portuguese valley of the Côa. Its figures, of equids, aurochs, deer and goats, were made mostly by pecking, with less incision and fine engraving, between 20,000 and 11,000 BC. In Roman times the area belonged to Lusitania, and gold was mined in the Águeda river, though no remains from that period survive in the municipality; the Arabs were driven out of the comarca in the late 11th century, during the reign of Alfonso VI.
Siega Verde
Monument
An open-air complex of Palaeolithic rock art along the river Águeda, in the area around Castillejo de Martín Viejo, Villar de Argañán and Villar de la Yegua (Ciudad Rodrigo), discovered on 17 October 1988 by Manuel Santonja, then director of the Museum of Salamanca, thanks to a local shepherd. It brings together more than 500 engravings, made by pecking, incision and abrasion, across 96 panels along one kilometre; they depict mostly horses, aurochs, deer and goats, along with rarer animals such as reindeer, woolly rhinoceros or bison, now extinct at these latitudes. They date between the Gravettian-Solutrean, around 20,000 years ago, and the Magdalenian, 17,000-9,000 years ago. A Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) since 1998, Unesco added it in 2010 to the World Heritage list.