Santisteban del Puerto

Santisteban del Puerto has been inhabited since prehistoric times. Dinosaur tracks from the Triassic period have been found at the Erillas Blancas site, and Palaeolithic humans left stone tools and cave paintings in the Cuevas del Apolinario and La Morciguilla, both UNESCO World Heritage sites. The town has carried many names across the centuries: Iberian Ilucia, Phoenician Itangi, Roman Ilugo, Visigothic San Esteban, Arab Sant Astabin, and medieval San Esteban del Puerto.

Its Arab castle was taken by King Fernando III in 1226, and the town was annexed to Úbeda by Alfonso X in 1254. Sancho IV granted it the status of Villa Real in 1285, though this was later stripped after the town backed the losing side in the battle of Montiel. From 1371, the town's fate was tied to the Benavides family, when Enrique II granted it to Men Rodríguez de Benavides. The lordship was raised to a county in 1473 and to a dukedom in 1793. For several centuries it was the wealthiest jurisdiction in the Kingdom of Jaén. The feudal regime was finally abolished in 1837.

The oldest traces of human presence are the Triassic dinosaur tracks at Erillas Blancas, now part of a municipal theme park on the site. Iberian artefacts discovered at the Perotito estate — including a finely worked silver patera decorated with imagery from Iberian mythology and dating to around the same period — are now held in the Museo Arqueológico Nacional in Madrid.

The church of Santa María del Collado is one of the most significant monuments. Declared a Historic-Artistic Monument in 1978, it dates in origin to the second half of the thirteenth century and was likely built during the reign of Fernando III. Its bell tower was originally a flanking tower of the castle. The church also preserves a Visigothic font, and the building itself is considered a rare and largely unrecognised example of Romanesque architecture in southern Spain.

The castle sits on a flat-topped hill roughly 200 metres across. Its core structure is Berber work from the tenth and eleventh centuries, later reinforced with Christian additions in the second half of the thirteenth century. Also worth visiting are the church of San Esteban, the Convento de San Francisco, the Museo Jacinto Higueras, and the Torre de Poyato, a keep from a rural castle dated to the fifteenth century.