Village
Medinaceli is a town of 686 inhabitants in the historic comarca of Tierra de Medinaceli, of which it is the capital, in the province of Soria, set on a hill at around 1,200 metres, heir to the Celtiberian and Roman Occilis. During Roman rule the valley's salt pans were worked, and salt extraction continued there until 1994, and the Roman arch and the Canal fountain were built. It was a frontier between Christians and Muslims, with streets so narrow that in some stretches you can touch the walls with outstretched arms. In the 20th century the economic centre moved from the hill to the Estación quarter, next to the Jalón. The town preserves the only three-span Roman arch in Spain, declared a monument in 1930, and a castle that was an Arab citadel and today serves as a cemetery.
Monument
Raised at the end of the first century in opus quadratum, it measures 13.20 metres long by 8.10 high and opens three bays, a central one of 1.90 metres and two lateral ones of 1.30; it is the only arch of that type preserved in Spain.
Curiosity
The inscriptions that crowned the monument were made of gilded bronze letters: the north face was dedicated to Augustus and the south to Domitian, though in the year 98 it was altered to honour Trajan after the condemnation of his memory.
Historical milestone
The Roman arch was protected on 9 August 1930 by the State under code RI-51-0000350; its position at almost 1,200 meters of altitude has punished it, and the south and east faces are far more eroded than the other two.
Historical milestone
The Cordoban leader died in 1002 in Medinaceli on returning from his last campaign and was buried in the town; the legend of the defeat at Calatañazor, much later, does not appear in the contemporary Arabic chronicles.
Monument
The only monumental entrance remaining from the walled enclosure of the Islamic Medina Selim, with a horseshoe arch framed in an alfiz; it gives access to the hill that dominates the valley of the Jalón from the west.
Monument
A sixteenth-century collegiate church, with a Gothic chevet and later additions, in which tombs of the Dukes of Medinaceli are preserved; its tower and its bulk dominate the houses of the upper villa.
Monument
The Palace of the Dukes of Medinaceli is a large Renaissance mansion built throughout the 16th century at the behest of the House of Medinaceli, which closes off one side of the arcaded main square of the town in Soria province. It was the residence of one of the most powerful noble houses of the Crown of Castile. Declared a monument on 1 June 1979, the building had fallen into neglect during the 19th century and was restored from the late 1990s onward. In December 2008 a museum with ten rooms dedicated to the ducal house opened on its ground floor, occupying almost the entire level of the building.
Monument
A sixteenth-century foundation of a women's convent that is still in use, one of the few buildings of the upper villa that has never lost its original function despite the emptying of the historic centre.
Curiosity
Beneath the plaza de San Pedro mosaic pavements of Roman Occilis are preserved, visible in the villa itself: they recall that the hill was occupied without interruption from before the arrival of the Arabs.
Historical milestone
The old quarter of the upper town was protected in 1963 as a historic-artistic site, which saved its medieval fabric and its armorial mansions when the village was emptying towards the station and the road.
Activity
The Toro Jubilo of Medinaceli (Soria) is a popular bull-running festival in which a bull is fitted with balls of burning pitch on top of its head, held on the night of the Saturday closest to 13 November in the town's main square, coinciding with the feast of the Cuerpos Santos (Holy Bodies), five martyrs from North Africa whose relics, according to tradition, arrived in Medinaceli on a bull that carried fire on its horns. The first time the bull was run, documented in the archive of the Dukes of Medinaceli, was on 29 September 1559, with King Philip II present. It has been held without interruption since the late 18th century, and was declared Espectáculo Taurino Tradicional de Interés Turístico de Castilla y León (traditional bullfighting event of tourist interest of Castile and León) in 2002.
Activity
On 11 November the villa honours the martyrs whose relics it has guarded since ancient times, in the religious celebration that opens the autumn festivities and precedes by barely a day the night of the fire bull.
Nature
In Torralba del Moral, an outlying village of the municipality, remains of fossil elephants together with stone tools appeared in 1888 while a canal was being dug; it is one of the two great Acheulean sites of the Ambrona valley.
Historical milestone
The Marquis of Cerralbo directed at Torralba, between 1909 and 1913, the first systematic campaigns and recovered 525 elephant remains and 557 stone tools, an assemblage that put Soria on the map of the European Palaeolithic.
Historical milestone
In the 1960s the American anthropologist F. Clark Howell directed six excavation campaigns at Torralba and Ambrona that brought to light about 700 stone tools and more than 2,100 fossils at the Torralba site alone.
Curiosity
The municipality brings together thirteen settlements, among them the upper villa, the Estación de Medinaceli that grew up beside the railway, Salinas de Medinaceli, named after its salt springs, and Fuencaliente de Medinaceli.
Nature
The villa crowns a limestone mesa at almost 1,200 metres from which the confluence of the Jalón and the Arbujuelo is dominated; two areas of the Natura 2000 Network occupy close to 26% of the municipal district.
Activity
The waymarked route that follows in the footsteps of the Cantar de mio Cid crosses the municipality of Medinaceli along the ancient road that linked the plateau with the Ebro valley, the same natural corridor used by Romans, Arabs and Castilians. Officially known as the Camino del Cid, it is an approved Long-Distance Trail (GR-160) that runs through eight Spanish provinces and four autonomous communities, between Burgos and Alicante, and can be travelled either by road or on foot; it takes its name from the Castilian knight Rodrigo Díaz and from the Cantar that recounts his exploits, one of the great works of European medieval literature.
Historical milestone
Alfonso I the Battler incorporated the stronghold into the Christian kingdoms around 1129 in his expansion along the upper Jalón; the site, which had been the head of an Islamic march, then passed under Castilian lordship.
Food and drink
The marinated pork belly, air-cured in the dry air of these heights, is fried until the rind puffs up; the torrezno of Soria has a provincial guarantee mark and is the obligatory mouthful at any table in the comarca.
Curiosity
Before the Muslims gave it the name of Madinat Salim, the hill was occupied by the Roman city of Occilis. From that stage come the arch, the mosaics and a good part of the ashlar reused in the houses.
Monument
The arcaded square of the upper town occupies the site of the old Roman forum. Completely restored, it closes the urban ensemble together with the ducal palace and the collegiate church at 1,204 metres of altitude, at the top of the hill.
Curiosity
The collegiate church guards the image of the Christ that gave its name to one of the most widespread devotions in Spain, with brotherhoods spread over the whole peninsula that make pilgrimage to this village of fewer than seven hundred inhabitants.
Nature
The hill rises right on the line that separates the waters that go to the Duero from those that come down by the Jalón towards the Ebro. That position on the divide explains its role as a gate and as a stronghold for two thousand years.
Historical milestone
In 2013 Medinaceli became the first municipality of Soria admitted to the association of the most beautiful villages of Spain, a recognition that has reoriented the economy of the upper town towards tourism.