Village
Ayora is a municipality of the comarca of Valle de Ayora, also called El Valle de Cofrentes-Ayora, in the southwest of the province of Valencia, on the border with Albacete. With 5,282 inhabitants (INE 2025), it is a Spanish-speaking municipality and one of the largest in area in the Comunitat Valenciana, with a municipal area of 446 km². It sits in a north-south tectonic trough, west of the Caroche massif and flanked by sierras such as the sierra de Palomeras to the east and the sierra de Mugrón to the southwest. It preserves its castle and, within its territory, the rock shelters of la Tortosilla. There are several hypotheses about the origin of its name: for Joan Corominas it would come from the Arabic uyura, onager, while Álvaro Galmés de Fuentes derives it from the pre-Roman root abia, river.
Monument
The castle of Ayora, a medieval fortress in the comarca of El Valle de Cofrentes-Ayora, was possibly built in the mid-13th century, after the Christian conquest, on an earlier Arab structure. After passing between the crowns of Castile and Aragon, it was incorporated into the Kingdom of Valencia by the agreement of Elche in 1305, and belonged to noble families such as the Sarrià and, from 1492, the Mendoza. It preserves the quadrangular keep, walls about 6 metres high and 900 metres long, moats and cisterns, as well as a 16th-century Puerta Falsa with a semicircular arch. It was left in ruins by the troops of Philip V during the War of the Spanish Succession, in 1707, and the French occupation of 1812 finished off what little remained. It has been a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) since 2006.
Monument
Natural cavity located at the southern end of the municipal term of Ayora, on the slope of the Muela de Tortosillas, next to the Cerro del Bosque, with views over a valley and the Mugrón and Enguera mountain ranges. The main chamber, hemispherical in shape, measures about 3 metres wide by 2 deep, and retains a frieze with the remains of some twenty painted motifs in Levantine and schematic style, among them an archer and six deer, with several overlapping phases of paint between 7,000 and 8,000 years old. It was discovered in 1911 by the brothers Daniel and Pascual Serrano: it is the first prehistoric rock art site found in the Comunitat Valenciana. It has been a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) since 1985 and has formed part, since 1998, of the UNESCO World Heritage List as rock art of the Mediterranean Basin.
Activity
Patron saint festivities of Ayora, with a Carnival and Holy Week of great tradition. The town also celebrates three major festivals: San Andrés, the local patron saint, on 30 November; the Santo Ángel Tutelar, on the second Monday of January, which commemorates the appearance of an angel in 1392 that stopped a plague epidemic; and the Virgin of the Assumption, the patroness, on 15 August, celebrated for a week. At Carnival, the burial of the sardine, the dance of the Sheet and the Piñata dance stand out; Holy Week centres on Good Friday, with a procession of the Passion in the morning and, at night, the Burial of the Lord amid candles and drums in silence.
Monument
The Archpriestly Church of the Assumption, the main church of Ayora, with an elegant Herrerian-style facade, is one of the finest examples of Renaissance architecture in the Region of Valencia. Its construction began thanks to the influence of Mencía de Mendoza, lady of Ayora in the 16th century, who introduced a taste for the Renaissance to the town.
Monument
Church in Ayora dedicated to San Blas, within the El Valle de Cofrentes-Ayora district. Also known as the church of Santa María la Mayor, it is a Gothic temple from the 13th century, with the choir enlarged in the 15th and reforms carried out in the 18th. It has a single nave covered by a timber roof structure over pointed diaphragm arches, four bays plus the chancel, side chapels between the buttresses, and a trapezoidal apse with a ribbed vault; the wooden boss of the apse depicts the Virgin and two angels holding the town's coat of arms. It was the village's parish church until 1577, when worship was moved to the new church of the Assumption, and it has remained a chapel ever since.
Monument
The chapel of Santa Lucía stands outside the town centre of Ayora, in the district of la Solana, the largest in the town, on the same plot once occupied by the old mosque; the street on which it stands, formerly known as calle del Horno de la Morería, now bears the name of the chapel itself. The first building was erected in 1607, but was demolished in 1898 and rebuilt by don Rafael Perades Gumiel, under the site direction of master builder García Barberán, completed on 12 March 1900. Neoclassical in style, with a rectangular plan of rhomboid perimeter, it holds six side altars and a main altarpiece painted by Casimiro Escribá depicting the saint, and it is listed as a Bien de Relevancia Local (a local-level heritage protection listing, below Bien de Interés Cultural).
Nature
A mountain massif with peaks such as Caroche, Cabra and Palomera, which rise above 1,000 metres, in the El Valle de Cofrentes-Ayora district. The Caroche peak, the highest at 1,126 metres, rises between the municipalities of Teresa de Cofrentes and Bicorp and has a fire-watch post at its summit, from which much of the Valencian districts can be seen and, on clear days, the sea and the town of Cullera. Small watercourses such as the Fraile river and the Argongeña flow down its slopes, and the massif features ravines, caves and deep crevices, especially in the area known as Las Quebradas.
Nature
Extinct volcanic formation that forms part of the natural landscape of the comarca of El Valle de Cofrentes-Ayora.
Curiosity
An Iberian settlement that was the main site of the region of La Contestania in the municipal district of Ayora, between the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. It covers about 15 hectares on a long hill called Mugrón de Meca, at 1,218 metres of altitude at its highest point, with evidence of occupation from the Bronze Age to the Middle Ages. It preserves cyclopean walls, numerous cisterns and houses carved into the rock, as well as Iberian, Roman and Islamic pottery. Notable is the so-called Camino Hondo, a pre-Roman engineering work with a 30% gradient that still preserves the marks left by cartwheels. Declared a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) in 1931, it was abandoned around the 15th century, possibly due to the Black Death.
Curiosity
Mencía de Mendoza, lady of Ayora in the 16th century, brought the Renaissance to the town, reflected in the start of work on the parish church and in the castle's 'false door'.
Activity
Ayora celebrates its patron saint, San Andrés, on the 30th of November, as well as the Santo Ángel Tutelar on the second Monday of January and its patron saint, the Virgen de la Asunción, on the 15th of August, its most important festivity.
Activity
The Fiestas of the Holy Guardian Angel of Ayora commemorate the appearance of an angel who, according to tradition, in 1392 put an end to the plague and famine ravaging the town: he appeared to a baker woman called Liñana and told her that the authorities and townspeople should go in procession to the site of the apparition, where a modest oratory was later built. In its memory, a pilgrimage is held on the second Monday of January to the hermitage of the Holy Angel, north of Ayora. The original oratory was replaced by a hermitage in 1599, rebuilt in 1639 and enlarged in 1786; in 1860 new works gave the building, in Valencian Baroque style, its present appearance, with a dome of blue tiles and a façade topped by a bell-gable.
Curiosity
Hamlet of Ayora with barely fifteen inhabitants that keeps one of the few teleclubs still working in Spain, an old social club where mass was once also said.
Monument
Hermitage beside the hamlet of San Benito, at the southern end of the municipal district of Ayora, whose foundation goes back at least to 1358 and which was built to put an end to the medieval border disputes between Ayora and Almansa.
Monument
Hermitage built between 1599 and 1600 in thanksgiving to San Roque and the Holy Angel for the end of an outbreak of plague, on the spot where tradition places the apparition of 1392 that legend says saved the town from hunger and disease.
Historical milestone
With the valley conquered during the Christian advance, the agreement signed in 1244 between Jaume I and the infante Alfonso of Castile fixed the boundary between the two crowns and left Ayora on the Castilian side. The territory was thus separated from the Kingdom of Valencia for decades.
Historical milestone
Rodrigo de Mendoza, marquis of Cenete and son of Cardinal Mendoza, bought the seigneury of the town in 1491. His daughter Mencía inherited the domain and brought to the valley artists and Renaissance models that can be recognised in the civil and religious architecture of the old town.
Historical milestone
The town took the side of archduke Charles and the Bourbon troops besieged it during the succession conflict (1701-1714). The castle that dominated the hill was set on fire and left in ruins, and the townspeople lost the privileges they had kept since the Middle Ages.
Historical milestone
The rock shelters with prehistoric paintings in the district were included in 1998 in the declaration of the rock art of the Mediterranean arc of the Iberian Peninsula as World Heritage. Hunting scenes and schematic human figures are their most repeated motifs.
Food and drink
The cold and the altitude allow the air-curing of longanizas, blood sausages and chorizos made at the family pig slaughter of winter. The town's butchers keep the recipes and supply the towns of the valley and the markets of the province.