Ciudad Encantada
Interesting facts
- Scenes of the 1982 film Conan the Barbarian, including Conan's meeting with the witch and with Subotai, were shot among these rocks.
- Although protected since 1929, the Enchanted City stands on privately owned land.
- Seventeen rock formations along the route carry names, including the Dog, the Turtle, the Bears, the Convent and Ariadne's Face.
- Red deer, beech martens, ocellated lizards, red foxes and crested tits live in the pine forest around the rocks.
- Scots pine, common juniper, yew, holly and hawthorn grow between the limestone blocks, along with many ferns in the shady corridors.
- It is classified by the IUCN in Category III, the class reserved for natural monuments and features.
Why it is worth it
La Ciudad Encantada — the Enchanted City — is a labyrinth of eroded limestone in the pine forests of the Serranía de Cuenca, at an altitude of around 1,500 metres. Over some 250 hectares, rain, frost and wind have carved the rock into shapes that seem to have been sculpted on purpose: giant mushrooms balanced on thin stems, narrow corridors between vertical walls, arches, overhangs and blocks that resemble ships, animals or human faces. Its emblem is the Tormo Alto, a tall column crowned by a wider cap of harder rock, which stands near the start of the path like a stone sentinel.
The limestone dates back about 90 million years, to the Cretaceous, when this part of the Iberian Peninsula lay on the floor of the Tethys Sea and calm waters accumulated thick deposits of calcium carbonate from dissolved minerals and the skeletons of marine animals. At the end of the Cretaceous, the uplift associated with the Alpine orogeny raised the old seabed above water. Rainwater charged with carbon dioxide then seeped into the permeable rock, dissolving it and opening galleries inside. Ciudad Encantada is a very mature karst: most of these underground passages have since collapsed, and what remains standing are the hardest blocks, worn into irregular forms because the rock varies in composition and hardness from layer to layer. Limestone pavements, sinkholes and swallow holes complete the karst landscape.
The site was declared a Natural Site of National Interest on 11 June 1929, and it now forms part of the Serranía de Cuenca Natural Park, created in 2007. A marked trail of about 3 km links the most famous formations, whose names include the Ships, the Seal, the Toboggan, the Roman Bridge, the Sea of Stone, the Elephant and Crocodile, the Theatre and the Lovers of Teruel. Local tradition holds that the Tormo Alto was the place where the Lusitanian leader Viriathus was cremated. Federico García Lorca dedicated a sonnet to the Enchanted City in 1935. Nearby Cuenca, the provincial capital, is known for its walled old town set on a rocky spur between two river gorges, with houses that hang over the cliffs.
Getting there
Ciudad Encantada lies near the village of Valdecabras, within the municipality of Cuenca, about 19 km from the city. The nearest major airport is Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD), about 137 km away.
Plan your visit
We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.
Nearby places
- Hanging Houses 17.6 km · museum
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Ciudad Encantada is a geological site near the city of Cuenca, in the autonomous community of Castilla–La Mancha, Spain, in which the erosive forces of weather and the waters of the nearby Júcar river have formed rocks into distinctive and memorable shapes.
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