Destinations

A granite gorge on the Duero, with villages built on the lip of it and pre-phylloxera vineyards behind.

Soria's roof: a working pine forest, a black glacial lake, and the source of the Duero.

The beating heart of Ribera del Duero wine country, renowned for its underground cellars and traditional roast lamb

Salamanca's mountain villages: dark stone, wooden balconies, and one town everyone already knows.

A working Benedictine abbey with a first-rate Romanesque cloister and daily sung offices.

A stone village with 388 portraits of its own former residents painted on the house walls.

The famous one: dark stone, wooden balconies and coaches arriving from ten in the morning.

The smallest and best-situated of the sierra's four famous villages, under a duke's castle.

A walled village with a castle, a square built as a bullring and two of the sierra's best tables.

Globally significant prehistoric site containing the oldest human remains found in Europe

The great Baroque square of Salamanca, and the city's evening living room.

A photogenic 15th-century Gothic palace facade adorned with hundreds of carved seashells

A dual cathedral complex where visitors can ascend into the galleries and walk the roofline for unique perspectives

A glacial lake under the Urbión peaks, black-bottomed and wrapped in pine and legend.

The main village below the Laguna Negra, with stone houses and a long rope-making past.

A dramatic medieval town dominated by a hilltop castle housing the region's premier wine museum

A hilltop village over the Arribes gorge, with stone lanes and old bodegas cut into the rock.

A duke's entire seventeenth-century vision, intact and empty, an hour south of Burgos.

The sierra's summit sanctuary, 1,723 m, with a black Madonna and views to Portugal.

A walled village that reinvented itself around bookshops, and stayed small enough to walk in half an hour.

A stone village with a collegiate church and a tenth-century past, half an hour from Burgos.

The grand Lady of Cathedrals, marking the final major Gothic achievement in Spain with a towering, historic profile

A storied city with exceptional cathedral stained glass and a long-standing free-tapas culture.

A university city of golden sandstone, built around one of the finest squares in Spain.

A significant stop on the Camino circuit defined by its grand Gothic cathedral and compact center

An unusual twelve-sided Templar church modeled after Jerusalem's Holy Sepulchre, standing as a rare Romanesque treasure

An enduring Roman-era bridge that offers the most classic sunset views of Salamanca

A 2,000-year-old Roman aqueduct, and the defining sight of Segovia.

A historic town rich in monumental heritage and spiritual significance.

An 11th-century granite defensive wall encircling the old city of Ávila, largely intact with 88 towers.

The midway point of the Camino Francés, known for its Mudéjar architecture.

Dominican convent with a soaring Plateresque stone facade — carvings so fine they read like silverwork, not masonry.

One of Europe’s oldest universities famous for its intricate facade and hidden stone frog

Home to the Church of San Martín, a jewel of Romanesque architecture.

A timber village in the heart of the pine forest, with the sawmills still working.

Baroque Jesuit church with twin towers; climb the bell tower for Salamanca's best rooftop panorama.

Valladolid's oldest church, its slender Romanesque brick tower rising incongruously above the modern city center.

A quiet, elongated village dominated by the ruins of a hilltop castle.

The Salamanca-side village above the dam, at the deepest and narrowest point of the gorge.

Isabelline-Gothic church whose extravagantly carved facade is one of the finest in Castile.

A castle perched on a cliff, long cited as a classic of medieval military architecture.

Luminous Gothic cathedral world-renowned for its vast collection of 13th-century stained glass

A photogenic medieval outpost best known for its uniquely intact and walkable city walls

Royal collegiate with the Panteón de Reyes — Romanesque frescoes so vivid it's called the 'Sistine Chapel of Spain'.

A 12th-century Romanesque cathedral in Zamora known for its distinctive ribbed dome.

Known as the Little Santiago, it is the gateway to the mountains of Galicia.

Famous for the massive Knights Templar castle that dominates the skyline.

A city renowned for its cathedral and Gaudi's whimsical Episcopal Palace.

A French-Gothic cathedral holding the tomb of El Cid and a gilded dome over the crossing.

A Roman aqueduct and a cliff-top castle make Segovia the most rewarding day trip from Madrid.