Village
Berlanga de Duero is a town of 810 inhabitants, the head town of its comarca, rising in the gorge of the Escalote river beneath the hill of its castle. It was a stronghold of the Caliphate on the frontier of the Middle March until its conquest by Ferdinand I of Castile in 1059, after which it passed to the lordship of the Tovar family. In the 16th century the marquises of Berlanga renovated the town: they built the collegiate church, their palace with Renaissance gardens, and the Corazonistas convent, although the castle burned down and was left abandoned in 1660 and the collegiate church was sacked by Napoleonic troops. The town preserves a quadrangular arcaded Plaza Mayor on wooden pillars, streets of adobe and timber framing, blazoned houses, and the old Jewish quarter of the Aljama.
Monument
The collegiate church of Santa María del Mercado was built entirely from scratch after repairing the old church of Nuestra Señora del Mercado was ruled out, commissioned by the lords of Berlanga, Íñigo Fernández de Velasco and María de Tovar; the works, begun in 1526 and directed by the architect Juan de Rasines, lasted four years, and the temple was inaugurated on 22 June 1530, at a cost of 30,000 ducats. Declared a historic-artistic monument in 1931 (a former Spanish heritage designation, forerunner of today's Bien de Interés Cultural) and today a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection), it has three wide naves, an apse, a transept and eight side chapels; in the main chapel, beneath the altarpiece, is the tomb of the first Marquis of Berlanga, and in the blind arches of the presbytery those of other members of the house.
Monument
Dated 1714, it occupies the chancel of the church with Solomonic columns and gilded foliage; it replaced the earlier furnishings and is one of the best preserved Baroque machines in the south of the province.
Monument
A fifteenth-century fortress raised over earlier Muslim and medieval structures, with a keep and artillery bastions; a second walled enclosure of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries comes down to the houses.
Monument
Of the Renaissance palace that the Marquises of Berlanga raised in the sixteenth century only the front is still standing: Napoleonic troops burned the building in 1811 and it was never rebuilt.
Monument
A Gothic pillory with a square base and circular steps planted in the town as a symbol of its own jurisdiction; before it sentences were carried out and the council's proclamations announced.
Monument
Abandoned since the beginning of the twentieth century and protected as a cultural asset since 1981, it preserves among tilled fields the walls of the church and the conventual quarters, on the outskirts of the town of Berlanga.
Historical milestone
The Castilian king took the fortress from the Muslims in 1060 and incorporated it into the Duero line; from then on Berlanga was the head of a community of town and land with more than thirty villages.
Historical milestone
Napoleon's troops sacked the collegiate church in 1811 and burned the town's noble houses, including the palace of the marquises; the town lost in a few days much of its movable heritage.
Historical milestone
The train reached Berlanga that year and for nine decades connected the comarca with Valladolid and Ariza; the passenger service was closed in 1985 and the line was left as a dead track among the fields.
Activity
In mid-August the town recovers its condition as a market place with a medieval market that fills the arcaded main street, days before the festival of the Virgen del Mercado at the end of the month.
Food and drink
Local cooking revolves around the salted fish that came up from the sea along the muleteers' roads: salt cod figón and potatoes stewed with dried conger eel are still fast-day dishes in the comarca.
Monument
The twelfth-century church of San Miguel Arcángel added in the following century an arcaded gallery of arches on paired columns, the model of Romanesque atrium repeated throughout the Castile of the Duero.
Historical milestone
Count Gonzalo Núñez de Lara granted Andaluz in 1089 what is held to be the first charter (fuero) of the present-day province of Soria, the origin of a community of town and land with villages of its own on the banks of the Duero, during the reign of Alfonso VI of Castile and León. Andaluz sits on a plain of the Duero basin, at 919 metres above sea level and about 40 kilometres south of the Sorian capital, on the road to Berlanga de Duero. The community of town and land that arose from the charter grouped together, besides Andaluz, the villages of Centenera de Andaluz, Tajueco, Valderrueda, Valderrodilla, Fuentepinilla, Fuentelárbol, La Ventosa, Torreandaluz, Osona and La Seca, along with the deserted villages of Quintanar and Fuentelfresno.
Monument
It crosses the Duero beside the old village of Andaluz and secured the passage of the drove road and of the way towards the fortress of Gormaz; very close by the remains of the castle that watched over the river ford are also preserved.
Curiosity
Abanco, Alaló, Andaluz, Brías, Cabreriza, Ciruela, Hortezuela, Lumías, Morales and Paones were added to the town one by one until they formed a municipality of eleven settlements, almost all today below twenty households.
Nature
Two Natura 2000 sites add up to 796 hectares in the municipal district, between the Duero groves and the limestone heights of the south, where poplar and willow riverbank alternates with moorland juniper.