Astudillo

Astudillo has Roman origins, with remains found in the surrounding area. In 1147, King Alfonso VII of León granted the town the same civic rights as nearby Castrojeriz. Through the Middle Ages and into the early modern period, the town grew significantly on the back of textile production.

For a period between 1785 and 1833, it formed its own single-settlement district within the administrative zone of Castrojeriz, under the Intendancy of Burgos.

The historic centre of Astudillo was declared a protected cultural asset, a conjunto histórico artístico, in 1995. It sits on the boundary between the Cerrato and Tierra de Campos regions, and its medieval street plan survives largely intact: a labyrinth of narrow lanes and small squares lined with aristocratic townhouses from the 16th to 18th centuries. Sections of the old town wall still stand, including the stretch beside the Convent of the Poor Clares, and one of the original six gateways, the Puerta de San Martín, remains.

Ruins of the Castillo de La Mota and its walls are also preserved. Three Gothic parish churches stand within the town. San Pedro and Santa María contain altarpieces made by Hernando de la Nestosa in the late 16th century.

Santa Eugenia houses a parish museum with Gothic sculpture, a Hispano-Flemish altarpiece, religious silverwork, and Roman mosaics. Outside the urban centre, Romanesque remains survive at the churches of Santa María de Dehesa de Espinosilla, Santa María de Valdeolmos, and the Santísimo Cristo de Torre Marte. The standout monument is the Real Monasterio de Santa Clara, founded in the mid-14th century by María de Padilla, the companion of King Pedro I of Castile.

Its church is Gothic-Mudéjar in style, with a fine carved wooden ceiling and ornate plasterwork in the choir. Beside it, Pedro I and María de Padilla built a palace with an Islamicate façade, its rooms decorated with carved timber ceilings and plasterwork. The palace now holds a museum of Mudéjar and sacred art, and one of the world's more extensive nativity scene collections.

Beneath the town runs a network of over two kilometres of documented underground galleries, stone-built passages with barrel and pointed vaults. Locals have long used them for ageing red and rosé wines, and traditional wine cellars cut into La Mota and El Altillo hills are also still visible. The porticoed main square is considered one of the most distinctive in the province.

A medieval bridge over the Río Pisuerga, reconstructed in 1779 under Carlos III, as recorded on a plaque on the bridge, crosses the river at the edge of town, alongside a set of smaller bridges and a long ashlar retaining wall over the Arroyo Parboño stream.