Logbook · 6 places

What to see and do in Duruelo de la Sierra

What to see and do in Duruelo de la Sierra (Pinares, Soria): 6 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 1 Monuments · 2 Nature · 2 Curiosities

Towns near Duruelo de la Sierra

Spain › Castile and León › Soria › Pinares › Duruelo de la Sierra

What to see and do in Duruelo de la Sierra

Duruelo de la Sierra
Village
Duruelo de la Sierra is a municipality in the province of Soria, deep in the sierra de Urbión, whose municipal area reaches 2,228 m at the Picos de Urbión, the highest point in the municipality. Here the Duero river is born, and over its first 26 km it drops more than 800 m in altitude before receiving, already within the town, the waters of the Triguera river. The Scots pine, prized for the quality of its timber, dominates a forest landscape completed by maritime pine, fern and heather. A municipality of about 1,035 inhabitants, it has a church of San Miguel Arcángel from the 12th century and shares out the communal pine forest among residents through the “suerte de los pinos” (pine lottery) system.
The Source of the Duero
Nature
In this municipal district rises the river that gives its name to half of Castile: in its first twenty-six kilometres the Duero descends more than eight hundred metres from the slopes of Urbión, whose peak reaches 2,228 metres.
The Castroviejo Viewpoint
Nature
Sandstone rock formations shaped by erosion make up a landscape of towers and needles above the valley of the Duero, one of the most spectacular balconies of the Sierra de Urbión.
The Church of San Miguel Arcángel
Monument
A church of Romanesque origin from the twelfth century, enlarged in the sixteenth; beside it a medieval necropolis of the ninth and tenth centuries has been excavated, documenting the early occupation of the headwaters of the Duero.
The Pine Lot Draw
Curiosity
La suerte de pinos, or the right of suertes (shares), is an age-old way of managing communal woodland that goes back to the medieval settlement charters used to encourage the populating of the Pinares district, between Burgos and Soria, of which Duruelo de la Sierra forms part. Because of the altitude, around 1200 metres on average, and the ruggedness of the terrain, this district is not suited to cereal farming, so its inhabitants have lived almost exclusively off the income from the woodland, divided into timber lots among those who meet the requirements of ties, roots and residence in the area. This equitable distribution has helped preserve the forest, which covers close to 100,000 hectares in the district, mostly Scots pine and black pine, with pockets of beech, oak, juniper and Portuguese oak.
The Filming of Doctor Zhivago
Curiosity
David Lean filmed sequences of Doctor Zhivago in these landscapes in 1965, and in 2007 the village was a film location again with El rey de la montaña: the Soria sierra played the Russian steppe.