Vilafamés

Human presence around Vilafamés goes back roughly 80,000 years, to remains of *Homo erectus vilafamensis* found in the Cova de Dalt del Tossal de la Font. A later cave site, the Cueva del Matutano, documents occupation between 14,000 and 11,000 years ago, and Bronze Age rock paintings mark the area's earliest artistic activity.

The town's name — recorded as *Vilahameç* and *Beniffamez* — points clearly to its Muslim origins. The castle foundations, the tight winding street plan around the upper quarter, and surviving stretches of wall and tower remnants all date from that period. After the fall of Burriana in 1233, King Jaume I of Aragón took the territory and in 1241 commissioned its repopulation, issuing a founding charter under the laws of Zaragoza. The town subsequently passed to the Knights Hospitaller in 1264, then to the newly created Order of Montesa in 1317.

Centuries later, Vilafamés saw serious fighting during the Carlist Wars. In early 1839, the Carlist general Cabrera besieged the town three times; in April that year his forces breached the walls before being repelled, with the siege finally lifted on the arrival of royal troops.

The Iglesia de la Sangre is the most layered of the town's religious buildings. Medieval in origin, it was partly reworked in the Baroque period and stands partly over a cistern that may once have served as a crypt. Inside, thirteen pointed arches survive from the original medieval structure, while the decoration includes rare Baroque altarpieces and frescoes attributed to the circle of Vicente and Eugenio Guilló. A chapel dedicated to Santa Bárbara, with painted angel scenes on its walls, dates from around 1702.

The parish church of the Asunción was begun in 1594 to a design by Martín de Mendoza, master builder of the Seu de Tortosa. Its exterior shows Baroque details — Corinthian columns, round arches — while Gothic ribbing persists inside. The building was extended between 1778 and 1783 and declared a cultural heritage site in January 2021.

Two smaller hermitages complete the picture. The Ermita de San Miguel, built in 1640, combines a place of worship with lodging that once housed hermits and tenant farmers. The Ermita de San Ramón, in the town centre near the old road to Borriol, is a whitewashed building with a pyramidal domed roof and a small altarpiece of Saint Ramón above its entrance.

Outside town, the Cueva Matutano is the only Upper Palaeolithic site in the Castellón region, and the rock shelter at the Rocas de Mallasén holds a schematic human figure in rock art, discovered in 1964.