Logbook · 6 places

What to see and do in Tordesillas

What to see and do in Tordesillas (Tierra del Vino, Valladolid): 6 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 3 Monuments · 1 Activities · 1 Historical milestones

How far each place is from the centre of Tordesillas

The Gothic church of San Antolín 150 m
The Royal Monastery of Santa Clara 300 m

Towns near Tordesillas

What to see in Matilla de los Caños 5.6 km · 2 places
What to see in Velilla 6.2 km · 1 place
What to see in San Miguel del Pino 7.5 km · 2 places
What to see in Torrecilla de la Abadesa 7.6 km · 3 places
What to see in Bercero 8.4 km · 2 places
What to see in Berceruelo 9.2 km · 2 places
What to see in Velliza 9.8 km · 2 places
What to see in Rueda 10 km · 5 places

Spain › Castile and León › Valladolid › Tierra del Vino › Tordesillas

What to see and do in Tordesillas

Tordesillas
Village
Tordesillas is a town in the province of Valladolid, 29 kilometres southwest of the capital, set in the flat vega that the Duero traces from east to west and which also receives the waters of the Zapardiel; it is the most important town in the Valladolid comarca of Tierra del Vino. It holds the titles of "most illustrious, ancient, crowned, loyal and most noble town", and its origin goes back, according to the most widely accepted theory, to a document of the year 909 in which it is mentioned as Autero de Sellas. It has 8,773 inhabitants. Here, in 1494, the treaty dividing the Atlantic between Castile and Portugal was signed, and it preserves the monastery of Santa Clara, built over a Mudéjar palace of Alfonso XI, as well as a medieval ten-arch bridge over the Duero.
The Treaty of Tordesillas
Historical milestone
The Treaty of Tordesillas was signed in this town in Valladolid province on 7 June 1494 between representatives of Isabella and Ferdinand, monarchs of Castile and Aragon, and of King John II of Portugal. The agreement divided the zones of navigation and conquest of the Atlantic and the New World by means of a line 370 leagues, about 2,062 kilometres, west of Cape Verde: the Spanish would not interfere with the Portuguese route around the Cape of Good Hope, nor the Portuguese with the recently discovered Antilles. That same day another treaty was signed in Tordesillas that set out the fishing rights between Cape Bojador and the Río de Oro and the boundaries of the Kingdom of Fez. In 2007 Unesco recognised it as World Heritage, in the Memory of the World category, for being a document shared between Spain and Portugal.
The Royal Monastery of Santa Clara
Monument
The Real Monasterio de Santa Clara, in Tordesillas (Valladolid), stands on the bluff above the river Duero, protected by the town's old walls, and brings together the convent of Poor Clare nuns, the rooms of the former palace and a set of Moorish baths. It began as the Mudéjar palace of Alfonso XI, called Pelea de Benimerín, commissioned around 1340 to commemorate the Battle of Salado. Peter I completed the works and in 1363 handed it to his daughters to turn it into a convent, endorsed by Pope Urban VI in 1365. It served as a place of confinement for Leonor Téllez de Meneses, accused of conspiring against the Crown, and at Christmas 1808 Napoleon Bonaparte stayed there for one night because of a snowstorm. It is the town's most notable religious building and retains a good part of the original palace's decoration.
The confinement of Juana I of Castile
Activity
Joanna I of Castile, known as the Mad, was born in Toledo in 1479 and was queen of Castile from 1504 and of Aragon and Navarre from 1516, although from 1506 she held no effective power and from 1509 lived confined in Tordesillas, first by order of her father, Ferdinand the Catholic, and later of her son, King Charles I, until her death in the town in 1555. In 1520 the Comunero uprising freed her from her confinement and asked her to lead the revolt, but she refused, and once Charles defeated the Comuneros she was locked away again. Her nickname 'the Mad' stemmed from a supposed mental illness alleged by her father and her son to keep her from the throne. That forty-six-year confinement made Tordesillas the central stage of the Castilian crown.
The ten-arch bridge
Monument
The bridge over the Duero opens in ten spans of pointed arch and preserves defensive elements; from the 15th century it was the infrastructure that gave Tordesillas its role as a road hub on the plateau.
The Gothic church of San Antolín
Monument
A Gothic church that holds notable works of art; together with the church of Santa María, from the 16th to 18th centuries and with a large altarpiece, it forms the parish complex of a town of 8,773 inhabitants. It now houses the San Antolín church museum, opened in 1969 to bring together pieces from other churches in Tordesillas. Founded in the 16th century by the councilman Pedro González de Alderete, whose family chapel, with a 1550 tomb by Gaspar de Tordesillas, is set off from the rest of the church by a plateresque grille; the church was completed in 1644 and preserves a high altarpiece of 1658 with paintings by Felipe Gil de Mena, as well as sculptures by Gregorio Fernández, Pedro de Mena and Francisco Salzillo.