Orgaz

Orgaz may stand on the site of Barnices, a settlement recorded by the ancient geographer Ptolemy in the Carpetania region. The town first appears in writing in 1183, in an agreement between the Archbishop of Toledo and the Master of the Order of Calatrava. At that time it fell under Toledo's jurisdiction during the reign of Fernando III.

The county of Orgaz carries an old name: tradition holds that El Cid received the title when he married Jimena in Burgos. In 1239 or 1240, Álvaro Pérez de Castro — a great-grandson of Alfonso VII and the man who defeated the emir Ibn Hud at the Battle of Jerez in 1231 — died here while travelling south after meeting Fernando III. Later, Pedro I granted the town to his guardian Martín Fernández, and Carlos V donated it, now a full county, to Álvaro Pérez de Guzmán.

The army of Enrique de Trastámara camped on Orgaz's land before the Battle of Montiel, and during the Peninsular War, French cavalry attacked two companies of Catalan volunteers near the town on 26 March 1813.

The parish church of Santo Tomás Apóstol dominates the town centre, designed by Alberto Churriguera in the eighteenth century and paid for by the townspeople themselves. To the west stands the castle, built in the late medieval period, with a surviving ten-metre stretch of its outer wall that gives a clear sense of how thick the original fortifications were.

Two of Orgaz's original four town gates still stand. The Arco de San José is a semicircular arch framed by masonry pillars. The Arco de Belén, also semicircular, has a machicolation on one side and a battlemented crown, its stonework laid in the Toledo style of irregular blocks between double rows of adobe brick. The five-arched granite bridge over the Riansares stream was built for Carlos III's hunting trips to Los Yébenes and restored in 2001.

The Plaza Mayor has a colonnaded arcade on all sides. Near the parish church, the restored Ermita de la Concepción revealed its original granite-slab floor during works begun in 2002. Several old manor houses line the Calle Real, the oldest dated 1564, along with the Casa de la Inquisición, which still has its carved wooden door and iron grille.