Logbook · 3 places

What to see and do in Pinilla del Valle

What to see and do in Pinilla del Valle (Sierra Norte, Madrid): 3 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 1 Curiosities · 1 Historical milestones

How far each place is from the centre of Pinilla del Valle

Sites of the Calvero de la Higuera 1.4 km

Towns near Pinilla del Valle

Spain › Community of Madrid › Sierra Norte › Pinilla del Valle

What to see and do in Pinilla del Valle

Pinilla del Valle
Village
Pinilla del Valle is a municipality of Madrid with about 200 residents, located at 1,093 metres above sea level next to the reservoir that holds the waters of the Lozoya, in a narrow strip running along the valley from the ridge bordering Segovia to the Cuerda Larga. At the Calvero de la Higuera site, whose excavations are opened to the public every summer under the direction of Juan Luis Arsuaga, Enrique Baquedano and Alfredo Pérez, remains have been found documenting Neanderthal settlement of the Iberian Peninsula; some of them are displayed at the Regional Archaeological Museum of Alcalá de Henares. Permanent settlement arrived in the Middle Ages, when the area was incorporated into the Sexmo de Lozoya, of the Community of Segovia. It preserves the church of San Miguel, from the late 15th century, protected since 1983.
Sites of the Calvero de la Higuera
Curiosity
A group of caves and rock shelters in the Lozoya valley with Neanderthal remains dating from between 100,000 and 40,000 years ago; in the Cueva Des-Cubierta the jawbone of the so-called girl of Lozoya was found, along with an accumulation of about thirty-five skulls of large herbivores. It comprises five main sites -Cueva del Camino, Abrigo de Navalmaíllo, Cueva de la Buena Pinta, Abrigo Ocelado and Cueva Des-Cubierta-, formed in a karst system where some cavities served as shelter for Neanderthals, among them the largest Neanderthal camp in all of Europe, while others were hyena dens. They were declared bien de interés cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) on 23 December 2004, under the designation Zona Arqueológica y Paleontológica Los Calveros.
Discovery of the Neanderthal sites of Calvero de la Higuera
Historical milestone
Road works next to the reservoir uncovered the Cueva del Camino in 1979, one of the five sites making up the Calvero de la Higuera complex, in the Lozoya valley: alongside it are the Abrigo de Navalmaíllo, the Cueva de la Buena Pinta, the Abrigo Ocelado and the Cueva Des-Cubierta. The excavations yielded molars of Homo neanderthalensis, Mousterian industry and a fauna some 90,000 years old including hyenas, lions, bears, rhinoceroses, horses and fallow deer, and the site is now known as the Valle de los Neandertales. The complex was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural in 2004 (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) as the Zona Arqueológica y Paleontológica Los Calveros.