Logbook · 5 places

What to see and do in Coca

What to see and do in Coca (Tierra de Pinares, Segovia): 5 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

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

How far each place is from the centre of Coca

Castle of Coca 400 m

Towns near Coca

Spain › Castile and León › Segovia › Tierra de Pinares › Coca

What to see and do in Coca

Coca
Village
Coca is a town in the province of Segovia, located on the Way of St James from Madrid, in the Tierra de Pinares district, 50 kilometres northwest of the provincial capital. It has around 1,700 inhabitants and occupies the site of the ancient Cauca, one of the most prosperous Vaccaean cities in the Duero valley from the 5th century BC, with between 6,000 and 8,000 inhabitants and a powerful city wall. Rome subdued the city in 151 BC through a trick recounted by Appian, and it was destroyed again in the Sertorian wars of 74 BC, though it recovered. Today the town is dominated by its 15th-century Mudéjar castle, among the best-preserved in Spain, and it preserves the tower of San Nicolás, Vettonian verracos (stone boar sculptures), the remains of a Roman domus and the tombs of the Fonseca family in Santa María la Mayor.
Castle of Coca
Monument
Coca Castle stands on the outskirts of the Segovian town that gives it its name, on a bend of the river Voltoya, a tributary of the Eresma, and is one of the few Spanish fortresses not set on a hill but on the escarpments of the terrain itself. Built in the 15th century by Alonso de Fonseca y Avellaneda and practically finished in 1493, it is one of the high points of Gothic-Mudéjar architecture: entirely of brick, with limestone reserved for arrow slits and columns, and surrounded by a very deep moat. The lower enclosure, square in plan, is flanked by four towers, the largest of which is the keep, with a narrow spiral staircase and an armoury covered by a Gothic ribbed vault. Owned by the House of Alba, it was ceded to the Ministry of Agriculture in 1954.
The Roman conquest of Cauca
Historical milestone
The Vaccaean city of Cauca, one of the most prosperous in the Duero valley, fell to Rome in the year 151 BC; in time it attained the status of a Roman municipium and came to house several thousand inhabitants, within the present-day municipal area of Coca.
Teodosio and the aristocracy of Cauca
Curiosity
The emperor Theodosius the Great came from a powerful aristocratic family linked to Cauca in the last period of the Empire, which makes this Segovian town the cradle of one of the late Roman imperial dynasties.
The pine forests of Coca
Nature
Between the rivers Eresma and Voltoya extend the pinewoods that sustain the municipality's economy: timber, resin and pine nuts come out of a sea of maritime and stone pine that gives its name to the whole comarca of Tierra de Pinares.