Logbook · 3 places

What to see and do in Bernardos

What to see and do in Bernardos (Comunidad de Ciudad y Tierra de Segovia, Segovia): 3 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 1 Curiosities

How far each place is from the centre of Bernardos

Hill of the Virgen del Castillo 3 km

Towns near Bernardos

Spain › Castile and León › Segovia › Comunidad de Ciudad y Tierra de Segovia › Bernardos

What to see and do in Bernardos

Bernardos
Village
Bernardos is a town in the Campiña Segoviana, head of the Sexmo de Santa Eulalia, 39 kilometres from the provincial capital and watered by the Eresma river, which forms a deep gorge with neighbouring Carbonero el Mayor. On its cerro del Castillo there already existed a fortified settlement in the Iron Age, inhabited until Visigothic times, and the village is recorded as Bernaldos from 1204. In 1519 Juan Bravo, a comunero leader, married María Coronel in the town. Since 1559 its slate quarries have been worked, an activity that continues today, and in the 18th century it stood out for its textile production. On the cerro del Castillo late-Roman and Arab walls of slate slabs are preserved, next to the hermitage of the Virgen del Castillo, to which a pilgrimage climbs every ten years. It has around 462 inhabitants.
Hill of the Virgen del Castillo
Monument
About three kilometres from the village of Bernardos, on the left bank of the Eresma river, this hillfort site preserves a fortified settlement inhabited from the 5th to the 11th century. It has a double defensive enclosure: the outer one, larger, with semicircular bastions, surrounds a narrower inner enclosure that protected the most vulnerable part of the settlement. The walls, about two metres wide on average, were built with slabs of slate, quartzite and schist bonded with lime and sand mortar. On the north flank a gate 3.20 metres wide opens between two towers. Inside the inner enclosure stands the ermita de la Virgen del Castillo, patroness of the municipality, with an annual romería; the site was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) on 12 May 2005.
The slate of Bernardos
Curiosity
Bernardos was for centuries a producer and exporter of slate, used both in ordinary building and in monuments; the same rock that sustains its economy served as material for the late Roman wall of the Cerro del Castillo.