Albarracín
A brick-coloured town Spaniards know and foreigners mostly don't
- When to go
- October 13° · 7 rainy days
- Per day
- €€price 2 of 5
- How many days
- ½days
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Albarracín sits on a rock above the Guadalaviar river, ringed by walls that climb the hill above the houses. Its colour is the strange part — the houses are rendered in reddish plaster from the surrounding hills, so the whole town looks like it grew out of the rock it stands on.
The streets, walls and viewpoints are open and free. You need a ticket for the cathedral, which you can only enter on a guided visit run by the Fundación Santa María de Albarracín: the cathedral alone is €5.50, combined with a guided walk through town €8.50. If you've come for the streets and the view, you don't need a ticket at all.
The climb to the Andador tower on top of the walls takes about fifteen minutes, and from up there it's obvious why the town was built this way: the river loops around the rock, so a wall was only needed on one side. Albarracín has been a national monument since 1961.
What to see in Albarracín
The walls and the Andador tower
The defensive wall climbing the hill above town. The ascent is steep but short, and the view takes in the whole roofscape and the river loop below.
Plaza Mayor
A small square ringed by wooden balconies, the centre of the old town.
The cathedral
The visit takes 50 minutes and is led in Spanish, with an audio guide for other languages. Inside are the high altarpiece of the Transfiguration and the altarpiece of St Peter in unpainted pine; the colour and ornament date from an 18th-century baroque makeover.
The red-plaster streets
Whole façades rendered in gypsum from the surrounding hills — hence the colour. Casa de la Julianeta, warped with age, stands by the Portal de Molina gate.
The Guadalaviar river and its paths
A flat, short walk along the river below town, with the best view of the walls from underneath.
Two things you probably did not know
In the eleventh century Albarracin was an independent Muslim principality, a small state of its own in the mountains of Aragon. It takes its name from the Berber family Banu Razin who ruled it.
In the pine woods around the town are sheltered rocks with prehistoric paintings some seven thousand years old, part of the UNESCO listing of Levantine rock art. You reach them on foot, on a trail marked from the village.
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