Huete

The hilltop that overlooks Huete has been occupied since the Bronze Age, when early settlers chose its commanding position for both defence and territorial control. Iron Age communities followed, and later a Roman-era settlement on the nearby hill of Álvar Fáñez supported the extraction of lapis specularis, a translucent gypsum mined extensively in the area. Scattered late-Roman villas in the river valleys below relied on cereal farming.

Huete enters recorded history firmly in the medieval period, during Moorish rule, when it was known as Wabda. It formed part of the district of Santaver and became a significant base for Berber tribal families, eventually falling under the Banu Di-l-Nun dynasty that established the taifa of Toledo. When Toledo fell to Alfonso VI, the last Toledan king, al-Qádir, withdrew to Huete before moving on to Valencia, where he died in 1091.

Under Castilian rule, repopulation was slow and difficult, partly because the Battle of Uclés in 1108 devastated Castilian forces nearby. Through the twelfth century Huete grew in strategic importance, and in July 1172 the Almohad caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf besieged the town for ten days. His forces breached the outer suburbs but never took the castle. The siege ended on 22 July after a sudden storm filled the fortress cisterns, allowing the defenders to hold out until the Almohad army withdrew. That storm gave rise to the town's patronage of saints Justa and Rufina.

Huete retains significant layers of its long past in stone. The town walls originated in the Moorish period and were reworked several times after the town passed to Castile, using a mixture of rammed earth, rubble masonry, and cut stone. Above the town stands the Castillo de Luna, also known as the Alcazaba de Wabda, a Moorish fortification built over earlier Roman remains, with portions of its walls still standing.

The former Jesuit college is one of the most architecturally varied buildings in town. Founded after a local cleric donated land and income in the mid-sixteenth century, it received its first Jesuits in 1570. The complex grew across different periods: the colonnaded cloister and bell tower date from the early seventeenth century, while the church was begun in 1700 to designs attributed to Juan de Sierra Torres and Tomás del Campo, completed three years later with the addition of a transept and crossing. The interior follows a standard Jesuit plan — a single nave with galleries, vaulted bays, and a dome over the crossing. Two later chapels added distinct styles: a rococo chapel associated with architect José Martín de Aldehuela, and a neoclassical one attributed to Mateo López. After the Jesuits were expelled in 1767, the church became the parish of San Nicolás el Real. The whole complex was declared a protected monument in 2004.

The Church of Nuestra Señora de Atienza is considered the oldest of Huete's medieval parishes, possibly built over a former mosque. Its style is an early Gothic rare in the province of Cuenca. The polygonal apse, with its lancet windows and exterior buttresses, dates from the thirteenth century, and a crypt beneath it served as a family burial vault for the Sandoval family.

The Episcopal Palace was built in three phases by different architects, including Antonio María Carabella in the late eighteenth century and Mateo López in the early nineteenth, though its central section was never finished.