Logbook · 5 places

What to see and do in Villafuerte

What to see and do in Villafuerte (Páramos del Esgueva, Valladolid): 5 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 2 Monuments · 1 Nature · 1 Historical milestones

Towns near Villafuerte

Spain › Castile and León › Valladolid › Páramos del Esgueva › Villafuerte

What to see and do in Villafuerte

Villafuerte
Village
A village in the Páramos del Esgueva comarca, in Valladolid, 37 km northeast of the capital, situated at 824 m on a rise overlooking the valley of the river Esgueva; it has 80 inhabitants, after a sharp decline between 1960 and 1970 amid the general rural exodus of those years. It was called Vellosillo until the mid-15th century, when the settlement moved up to the rise from its original site beside the river, near the present-day cemetery. Between 1434 and 1462 Diego González de Toledo bought the lordship, and his son Garci Franco de Toledo, from a wealthy family of converted Jews, changed the town's name and around 1473 began building the present castle. It preserves that Gothic castle and a Romanesque church with Mudéjar elements.
The castle of Garci Franco de Toledo
Monument
A fifteenth-century Gothic fortress of almost square plan, with a keep of five floors run through by a spiral staircase, cylindrical drums with machicolations and a barbican; declared a BIC, it is today almost completely restored.
The church of San Miguel Arcángel de Villafuerte
Monument
Of Romanesque origin of the twelfth century, it preserves its original apse and doorway; in the sixteenth century it received a Mudéjar choir and roof, whose coffering elements ended up moved to a provincial building in Valladolid.
From Vellosillo to Villafuerte
Historical milestone
Around 1473 Garci Franco de Toledo, a member of a converso family that had bought the lordship, undertook the building of the castle and changed the name of the place, which until then was called Vellosillo, to Villafuerte.
The plateau of Villafuerte above the valley
Nature
Villafuerte sits at 824 metres, at one of the highest points of the Páramos del Esgueva, on a limestone platform that dominates at a glance the valley of the river and the slopes that separate it from the cereal plain.