Logbook · 5 places

What to see and do in Ciempozuelos

What to see and do in Ciempozuelos (Las Vegas, Madrid): 5 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

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

How far each place is from the centre of Ciempozuelos

Espartinas Salt Works 4.5 km

Towns near Ciempozuelos

What to see in Titulcia 4.8 km · 4 places
What to see in Valdemoro 5.9 km · 18 places
What to see in San Martín de la Vega 6.8 km · 4 places
What to see in Seseña 9.4 km · 10 places
What to see in Pinto 11 km · 6 places
What to see in Villaconejos 13 km · 4 places
What to see in Esquivias 14 km · 12 places
What to see in Torrejón de Velasco 14 km · 5 places

Spain › Community of Madrid › Las Vegas › Ciempozuelos

What to see and do in Ciempozuelos

Ciempozuelos
Village
Ciempozuelos is a city in the comarca of Las Vegas, in the Community of Madrid, with about 26,000 inhabitants and situated beside the Jarama river, which marks its eastern boundary and forms part of the Sureste regional park. Razed by the Arabs in 714, it was rebuilt by Alfonso VI around 1085 and belonged to the Concejo of Segovia and later to the lordship of Andrés de Cabrera, before its definitive repopulation in 1457. In 1894 and 1895, commissioned by the Real Academia de la Historia, an important set of ceramics from the Bell Beaker culture, the Chalcolithic and the early Bronze Age was excavated here, which gave its name to the Ciempozuelos Bell Beaker ceramic style. The city also preserves a Baroque parish church with a canvas by Claudio Coello and the historic Espartinas salt works.
Espartinas Salt Works
Monument
Salt-working site declared Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in 2006 and listed as a site of geological interest; excavations from 2001 to 2004 documented evaporation ponds and artificial caves occupied since the late Neolithic. It extends through the Valdelachica valley, at the foot of the gypsum escarpments on the right bank of the Jarama, and it was the place where the mineral thenardite was discovered. In 2006, fifteen sites linked to salt extraction were counted in the surrounding area, among them evaporation ponds, artificial caves and the remains of the old convent of las Salinas, next to the mine and the spring of mother waters that supplied the works.
Bluffs and cliffs of the Jarama
Nature
A Special Protection Area for Birds covering 27,961 hectares of floodplains, slopes and gypsum cliffs along the Jarama and the Manzanares; peregrine falcon, eagle owl, lesser kestrel and a colony of black kites breed on its rock faces.
Bell Beaker necropolis of Ciempozuelos
Nature
In May 1894 work on the road towards San Martín de la Vega uncovered seven burials with decorated pottery that the Royal Academy of History excavated as an emergency; the find gave its name to the Ciempozuelos Bell Beaker style.
The ceramics that gave a style its name
Historical milestone
Two emergency campaigns brought to light in 1894 a group of bell beakers decorated with incisions filled with white paste. Their quality led prehistorians to name a whole peninsular variant the "Ciempozuelos style".