Logbook · 5 places

What to see and do in Calatañazor

What to see and do in Calatañazor (Tierras del Burgo, Soria): 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 Calatañazor

The Sabinar Nature Reserve of Calatañazor 2.8 km

Towns near Calatañazor

What to see in Blacos 4 km · 1 place
What to see in Muriel de la Fuente 4.5 km · 5 places
What to see in Torreblacos 6.1 km · 1 place
What to see in Rioseco de Soria 6.7 km · 2 places
What to see in Cabrejas del Pinar 11 km · 4 places
What to see in Cubilla 11 km · 1 place
What to see in Muriel Viejo 12 km · 3 places
What to see in Abejar 12 km · 6 places

Spain › Castile and León › Soria › Tierras del Burgo › Calatañazor

What to see and do in Calatañazor

Calatañazor
Village
Calatañazor is a walled town in the Soria comarca of Tierras del Burgo, with 43 inhabitants, in the valley of the Milanos river, between the sierra de Cabrejas to the north and the páramo that bears its name; its name comes from the Arabic an-nazur, watchtower. Seen from its upper part, it offers the view of a medieval town above the river's escarpment, so deep that it made walls unnecessary on that side; in the lower part, walls and castle ruins give it its fortress-like appearance. The village, built of rammed earth and masonry with juniper logs and conical pinewood-style chimneys, climbs a cobbled street up to the castle square and its late medieval rollo. A monument to Almanzor bears the engraved verses dedicated to him by the poet Gerardo Diego. It preserves a grove of Spanish juniper unique of its kind.
The legend of the battle of Calatañazor
Historical milestone
Tradition places in Calatañazor, in July of the year 1002, the defeat of Almanzor at the hands of the Christian armies of Castile, León and Navarre, summed up in the saying «at Calatañazor Almanzor lost his drum». Branded unreal since the 18th century for lack of evidence in the chronicles of the time, the legend was first told by the chronicler Lucas de Tuy, who includes a fisherman weeping in Arabic and in the Romance tongue, announcing the fall of the Moors; to the prelate, that apparition was the devil. According to this tradition, Almanzor refused to eat or drink and died on reaching Medinaceli. Muslim sources place the encounter near the castle of las Águilas, without mentioning a decisive defeat. Present-day historians regard the episode as a compensatory myth.
The castle and the church of Nuestra Señora del Castillo
Monument
Of the castle of Calatañazor (Soria) there remain the keep and several stretches of wall on the hill overlooking the village of cobbled streets and conical chimneys, declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) since 1962. At its foot, the church of Nuestra Señora del Castillo was built between the 12th and 16th centuries, and so it mixes the original Romanesque fabric —of which the base, the portal and three archivolts with animal capitals survive— with later Gothic additions. Inside, a polychrome 18th-century altarpiece in Mannerist style stands out, placed opposite the apse beneath a Gothic vault, and it houses a small parish museum with paintings, pieces of goldwork and sculpture, and holdings from the town's historical archive.
The Sabinar Nature Reserve of Calatañazor
Nature
A nature reserve declared on 11 July 2000, protecting 30 hectares —22 of them of juniper woodland— in the municipal area of Calatañazor, south of the Sierra de Cabrejas (Soria), next to the Fuentona Natural Monument, with which it shares a visitor centre. It is home to some of the oldest specimens of Spanish juniper, a resinous evergreen tree known locally as enebro, which usually reaches 14 metres in height; the junipers of Calatañazor, by contrast, reach up to 20 metres in height and 8 in trunk diameter, thanks to the land having traditionally been used as pastureland (dehesa), which has kept scrub from taking hold. Its wood, very hard, gives off an incense-like smell when burnt, which gave the species its scientific name, thurifera.
The Valley of Blood
Curiosity
This is what the residents call the valley seen from the castle, where legend placed the clash with Almanzor. The place name has survived for centuries a battle that probably was never fought.