Albarracín

Albarracín seems to grow out of the rock it stands on. The old town clings to a steep spur almost entirely wrapped by a meander of the Guadalaviar River, its houses stacked along narrow, sloping lanes and some of them hanging over the gorge. Much of it is built in or washed with the reddish tone of the local rodeno sandstone, so that walls, roofs and cliffs blend into one warm colour, while a line of fortifications climbs the ridge above to the Torre del Andador.

The name goes back to the Banu Razin, a Berber family who made the town the capital of their own small taifa kingdom in the 11th century; the Andador tower and the castle that held their citadel are survivals of that time. After the taifa period Albarracín passed to the Navarrese Azagra family, who ran it as a lordship independent of both Castile and Aragon from the later 12th century and even obtained a bishopric for it. Peter III of Aragon besieged the town in 1284, and in 1300 it was formally absorbed into the Kingdom of Aragon. A Jewish community lived here from before the 12th century until the expulsion of 1492. The present walls date largely from the 14th century, and the Cathedral of El Salvador, a single-nave church with side chapels, was built in the 16th century next to the castle; its museum keeps a set of Flemish tapestries telling the story of Gideon.

In July 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, Republican troops seized most of the town in a sudden attack while defenders held out in the town hall and the cathedral, until Nationalist reinforcements retook it a few days later. Albarracín was declared a national monument in 1961 and received Spain's Gold Medal for Merit in the Fine Arts in 1996. The surrounding Pinares de Rodeno, a protected landscape of pine woods and red sandstone outcrops, holds prehistoric rock paintings and draws climbers to its boulders. Albarracín is the main town of the Sierra de Albarracín, a mountainous district at about 1,180 metres above sea level.

Getting there

Albarracín lies about 30 km west of Teruel, the provincial capital, which has a railway station. The nearest airport is Zaragoza Airport (ZAZ), about 145 km away in a straight line.