Logbook · 13 places

What to see and do in Santa María de Huerta

What to see and do in Santa María de Huerta (Tierra de Medinaceli, Soria): 13 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 6 Monuments · 1 Activities · 2 Curiosities · 3 Historical milestones

How far each place is from the centre of Santa María de Huerta

The castle of Belimbre 2.2 km
The cyclopean ruins of Huerta 2.7 km

Towns near Santa María de Huerta

Spain › Castile and León › Soria › Tierra de Medinaceli › Santa María de Huerta

What to see and do in Santa María de Huerta

Santa María de Huerta
Village
Santa María de Huerta is a town in the province of Soria with 239 inhabitants, located in the valley of the river Jalón, at the southwestern end of the province and already close to the border with Zaragoza. Its main monument is the Cistercian monastery of Santa María de Huerta, declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in 1882 and built in the 16th century on an earlier 12th-century foundation due to Alfonso VII. About two kilometres away stands Belimbre castle, and the municipality also preserves the Casa Palacio de la Marquesa de Villa Huerta, the so-called Ruinas Ciclópeas and a Celtiberian hillfort discovered in the early 20th century by the Marquis of Cerralbo, with remains from the early Iron Age. The main festival, in honour of San Bernardo, the town's patron saint, is held in late August.
The Cistercian monastery of Huerta
Monument
Alfonso VII brought in 1142 from the Gascon abbey of Berdoues a Cistercian community with its abbot Rodulfo; the lack of water forced its transfer in 1162 to these lands beside the Jalón, where the monastery was raised.
The first stone laid by Alfonso VIII
Historical milestone
The Castilian king laid on 20 March 1179 the first stone of the great monastic works, which advanced quickly thanks to royal patronage and to donations, under the rule of the fourth abbot, Martín de Hinojosa.
The Gothic refectory of the monastery
Monument
Begun in 1215, it is covered with sexpartite vaults and lit by tall pointed windows; Lampérez called it the most beautiful and spacious of any known in Spain, and it remains the jewel of the complex.
The Cloister of the Knights
Monument
A Gothic cloister on which a Renaissance storey of open galleries was superimposed between 1533 and 1547; its name recalls the nobles who chose the monastery as their family burial place.
The will of Jiménez de Rada
Historical milestone
The archbishop of Toledo Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada signed in Paris, on 24 April 1201, a will in which he asked to be buried in this monastery, of which he was the great benefactor; his tomb is still in the abbey church.
The expulsion of the monks and the national monument
Historical milestone
The monks were expelled with the disentailment of Mendizábal and the complex was left abandoned, until in 1882 its declaration as a Monumento Nacional (Spain's heritage designation in force until 1931) stopped the plundering of its stones.
The return of the Trappists
Curiosity
Since 1930 a community of the Trappist order has inhabited the monastery again, today a good twenty monks: almost a century of monastic life recovered after exactly a century of abandonment.
The pantheon of the Lords of Molina
Curiosity
The lords of Molina chose the abbey as their family burial place, just as knights and prelates did: the monastery functioned for centuries as the aristocratic cemetery of the frontier.
The kitchen and the lay brothers' hall
Monument
Beside the refectory are preserved the great monastic kitchen with its central hood and the hall of the lay brothers, quarters of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that show how the work of a Cistercian abbey was organised.
The cyclopean ruins of Huerta
Monument
A group of walls of cyclopean bond, protected as an archaeological zone since 1931, is added in the municipal district to a Celtiberian settlement of the Iron Age: the occupation of the valley is much earlier than the arrival of the Cistercians.
The castle of Belimbre
Monument
About two kilometres from the village stand the ruins of this fortress, which guarded the passage of the Jalón river on the boundary with the province of Zaragoza, one more of the castles that lined the corridor between Castile and Aragon. It is considered the origin of Santa María de Huerta: a first settlement is thought to have been established there before the village moved to its present site. It inspired the legend Hermosa de la mancha roja, collected by Vicente García de Diego in his 1953 Antología de Leyendas. Like the rest of Spain's castles, it was given generic protection by a 1949 decree, and today it would hold the status of Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection).
The Desafío Alto Jalón
Activity
Created in 2012, this ultramarathon is among the longest foot races in Europe and runs through several municipalities of the upper Jalón, crossing juniper woods, moorlands and gorges in a single continuous day.