Villanueva del Conde

A hilltop town in the Sierra de Francia of Salamanca, tied by legend to the discovery of one of the region's most venerated Marian shrines and home to the remains of the medieval holy woman who foretold it.

A walled medieval village in Salamanca province whose complete circuit of 15th-century walls, four original gateways, and hilltop castle survive almost entirely intact.

A village of carved stone facades and timber-framed houses in the Sierra de Francia, where 388 painted portraits of former residents stare back at you from the walls of their old homes.

A castle with a cemetery inside its walls, a bullring that may be Spain's second oldest, and a parish church blending Gothic, Baroque, and Mudéjar styles, San Martín del Castañar punches well above its size in the Salamanca countryside.

The first village in Spain ever granted heritage protection, a tangle of timber-and-stone houses in the Sierra de Francia, little changed in centuries.

A castle-topped hill town on the old Silver Route through Salamanca province, where medieval walls, a Romanesque church, and a granite bridge over the Cuerpo de Hombre river survive in close company.

A university city of world-historical weight, where the grammar of Spanish was first codified, Columbus plotted his Atlantic crossing, and the foundations of international law were laid, all within one sandstone skyline in Castilla y León.