Hita

The source material for Hita's history is too fragmentary to support a reliable paragraph. The available text references a mid-period population of 1,000 inhabitants and a description in Pascual Madoz's geographical dictionary of Spain, but the surrounding context is missing. NONE would be cleaner than guesswork here.

The church of San Juan Bautista was built between two centuries in Mudéjar style, with three naves and a polygonal apse. Its tower is Herrerian. Part of the roof collapsed during the Civil War, but the coffered ceilings above the high altar and the Chapel of the Virgin survived intact, featuring octagonal carved panels. Restoration work between 2002 and 2004 also exposed the original stone and brick walls. The church now houses a collection of burial slabs from the ruined medieval church of San Pedro.

San Pedro itself was a noble burial church through several centuries, later becoming an arciprestazgo seat. Its sandstone ashlar façade survives. Destroyed in the Civil War, the ruin has served as an open-air theatre for the Medieval Festival of Hita since 2018.

The Plaza Mayor, known also as the Plaza del Arcipreste, was a medieval market. Most of its houses belonged to Hita's Jewish merchants until their expulsion in 1492. A house called El Alboroque de Samuel Levy, identified by historian Manuel Criado del Val, is thought to have been the home and shop of a Jewish merchant and friend of the royal treasurer, expelled that same year. The plaza retains a distinctive double-bay arcade and a high wall separating it from the upper-level Plaza del Ayuntamiento.

The Puerta de Santa María is the main gate of the town walls, commissioned in 1441 by the first Marquis of Santillana. A fine example of Gothic military architecture, it has a pointed arch, two corner turrets, a continuous machicolation and a crenellated parapet, topped by the Mendoza family coat of arms. Damaged in the Civil War, it was partly rebuilt in 1965 and fully restored in 2005.

Hita climbs a hill in Guadalajara, with the site of its Muslim-era fortress on the summit and a medieval town below, protected as a historic ensemble since 1965. Half a kilometre of its walls still stands, entered by the Gothic Puerta de Santa María, commissioned in 1441 by the first Marquis of Santillana. On the hillside, the barrio de los Bodegos is a group of medieval cave houses dug into the slope, and below it some hundred caves kept wine from the Middle Ages into the twentieth century.

In the fourteenth century Juan Ruiz, the Archpriest of Hita, wrote the Libro de Buen Amor, and a small museum in the Casa del Arcipreste is devoted to it. Since 1961 the Festival Medieval, of national tourist interest, has filled the first Saturday of July with theatre, masked botargas, the battle of Don Carnal and Doña Cuaresma, and jousting in the Palenque.

Hita joined Los Pueblos Más Bonitos de España in 2017. The label is awarded by a private association, not the state: a village applies and is audited against around 40 criteria, from how its historic buildings are conserved to the upkeep of its streets, and members are reviewed and can lose it. Hita is one of 8 members in Castilla-La Mancha, out of 126 in Spain. See all heritage towns in Castilla-La Mancha.