Berlanga de Duero

The earliest traces of human occupation in the Berlanga area go back to the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. Celtiberian remains are scattered across the municipality, most of them still unstudied. A Roman settlement may have stood here, possibly called Valeránica after the Emperor Valerian, though the philologist Álvaro Galmés de Fuentes questioned whether the name Berlanga actually has Roman roots at all.

Under Arab rule the town was an important stronghold within the jurisdiction of Medinaceli, and the first version of today's castle was a Moorish alcazaba. Berlanga's position on the Duero line made it strategically vital throughout the Middle Ages — it sat alongside the fortresses of Gormaz, Osma, San Esteban and Atienza, a frontier contested again and again by Muslim and Christian forces, and later by Castile and Aragon.

After the Reconquest the town passed to the Tovar family, who held the dukedom of Frías and added the title of Marquesses of Berlanga. They built the current castle, and also a palace later destroyed by French forces — a palace that contemporary chronicles describe as having one of the finest gardens in Europe.

By 1842 the town had 426 households and 1,804 residents. A railway line connecting it to Valladolid and Ariza opened in 1895 but was closed to passengers in 1985.

The heart of Berlanga is its arcaded main square, a classic Castilian plaza with wooden pillars on stone bases running around all four sides. Several streets share the same porticoed character, their buildings of adobe and timber frame resting on heavy posts. Noble houses with stone coats of arms line the Calle Real, and the old Jewish quarter — the Aljama — still preserves its medieval street layout.

The collegiate church, declared a monument of cultural interest in 1931, was built between 1526 and 1530 to a design by Juan de Rasines, who had already worked at Santo Domingo de la Calzada and Briviesca. Its patrons, María de Tovar and Íñigo Fernández de Velasco, demolished the town's existing medieval churches to fund and build it. The style sits between Gothic and Renaissance: four pairs of tall cylindrical columns support vaults with late-Gothic quatrefoil tracery. The walnut choir stalls, by masters Vandoma and Valderrama, seat 63 and date from the second half of the 16th century. The high altar retablo is churrigueresque, dated 1704, with an Assumption painted by Antonio Palomino. A Hispano-Flemish retablo survives in the Chapel of St Anne, and an alabaster tomb attributed to Vasco de la Zarza stands in the Bravo de Laguna chapel. Near the north door hangs a curious relic: a stuffed black caiman brought from Panama in 1543 by Fray Tomás de Berlanga — the third Bishop of Panama, adviser to Charles V, and the discoverer of the Galapagos Islands.

The castle, built in the 15th century over earlier Muslim foundations, consists of thick walls enclosing a slender keep. Two rings of defensive walls survive in part: the inner circuit includes the well-preserved Puerta del Mercado beside the old palace site, while the outer circuit retains a long stretch of its tapial wall, a strongpoint called Las Torrecillas, and the Puerta de Aguilera.