Logbook · 4 places

What to see and do in Sotosalbos

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

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

How far each place is from the centre of Sotosalbos

Church of San Miguel de Sotosalbos 200 m

Towns near Sotosalbos

Spain › Castile and León › Segovia › Alfoz de Segovia › Sotosalbos

What to see and do in Sotosalbos

Sotosalbos
Village
A village in the Alfoz de Segovia district, on the western slope of the Macizo de Peñalara, Sierra de Guadarrama, with about 132 inhabitants and the Sotosalbos stream, a tributary of the Pirón, as its main watercourse. These lands were donated to the bishopric of Segovia in 1116, a grant that Alfonso I the Battler confirmed in 1122, when the place, then called Sotis Albis, began to be settled; in 1536 the Segovian cathedral chapter sold the property to the Marquess of Aguilafuente. Its 12th-century church of San Miguel displays one of the richest arcaded galleries of Romanesque architecture in the sierra, with numerous decorated capitals.
Church of San Miguel de Sotosalbos
Monument
The church of San Miguel de Sotosalbos, a Romanesque temple of the 12th century and a historic-artistic monument (an earlier heritage-protection category, predecessor of the Bien de Interés Cultural) since 1973, was built over an earlier, simpler church from the late 11th century, from which the rectangular plan of the apse derives; the porch and tower date from the 13th century, and the capital at its entrance depicts the Adoration of the Magi beneath trilobed arches. With a single nave, rectangular apse, a porch to the south and a bell tower next to the apse, it offsets its simplicity with decoration of monsters, centaurs and sirens, and warriors and jesters among the corbels of the cornice. In the tower there is a small museum with the seated image of Nuestra Señora de la Sierra, from the 13th or 14th century, and a Gothic-Renaissance cross bearing the hallmark of Antonio de Oquedo. The surroundings still preserve a farrier's shoeing frame, old fountains and a stone cross.
Sotosalbos in the Libro de buen amor
Curiosity
Juan Ruiz, the Archpriest of Hita, mentioned Sotosalbos in his Libro de buen amor, of the fourteenth century; the mountain hamlet was thus written into the itinerary the poet travels through the passes of the Guadarrama in one of the major works of Castilian literature.
The donation to the bishopric of Segovia
Historical milestone
For centuries these slopes were no man's land between Christians and Muslims; after the Christian advance, in 1116 they were donated to the bishopric of Segovia, which explains the density of Romanesque churches raised in the area shortly afterwards.