Sigüenza

People have lived on the hills above the Henares valley since the Iron Age, and the geographer Pliny the Elder recorded Segontia as a significant Celtiberian city. Hannibal and his brother Hasdrubal both besieged it before the Romans took control following the fall of Numantia, eventually absorbing it into the road network connecting Mérida with Zaragoza.

Under the Visigoths the town grew around its Roman core and became an episcopal seat, first mentioned at the Third Council of Toledo in 589. The Muslim period reduced its strategic weight in favour of Medinaceli, though the castle overlooking the Henares confluence dates from this era. The town changed hands several times during the Reconquista; Alfonso VI of León is considered the likely conqueror after the fall of Toledo in 1085. Final Christian reconquest came on 22 January 1123 or 1124, led by Bernardo de Agén, the Aquitaine-born bishop-elect of the diocese. Even then the surrounding territory remained unsettled, exposed to raids along the Henares for decades afterwards.

From the Middle Ages until the 19th century Sigüenza was an episcopal lordship — a city shaped by its bishops more than by any crown.

Sigüenza was declared a protected historic-artistic ensemble in 1965. Its medieval street pattern survives in the lanes of Las Travesañas, which open onto the Plazuela de la Cárcel — the old medieval main square — still surrounded by the former town hall, the jail building, and the Posada del Sol. Nearby are the Callejón de los Infantes, with its Palacio de los Infantes, and the baroque quarter of San Roque, home to the city's main park, La Alameda.

The cathedral blends Romanesque-Cistercian origins with Gothic structure and Renaissance interior details; its two heavy façade towers give it the look of a fortress. Inside, the Capilla de los Arce holds the famous reclining effigy known as El Doncel de Sigüenza, and the sacristy is decorated with carved heads throughout. The bishop's castle — the alcázar — is now a Parador hotel. The Renaissance Plaza Mayor was commissioned by Cardinal Mendoza and retains its arcaded municipal palace with a Renaissance courtyard.

Other monuments include the late-Gothic Casa del Doncel (now owned by the University of Alcalá de Henares), two Romanesque parish churches — San Vicente and Santiago Apóstol — a Gothic-Renaissance Clarissan monastery, a Baroque Ursuline monastery, the Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art, and the Ermita del Humilladero, a wayside chapel built in 1568 at a crossroads on the Cañada Real, open year-round to show its vaulted Gothic interior.