Day trips from Salamanca

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.

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 wine town above the Duero crowned by a richly carved 12th-century collegiate church, with a historic core of eleven protected monuments and sweeping river views.

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 steep mountain village in the Sierra de Béjar, its sloping streets cut by stone water channels and lined with the tall, balconied houses of old pork curers.

Hervás contains the best-preserved Jewish quarter in Extremadura and one of the most evocative in Spain: a neighbourhood of medieval stone houses on steep alleys above the Ambroz river, where the Jewish community lived for two centuries until the expulsion of 1492 — and where the stone and the street pattern have changed very little since.

Sitting above the Duero on the old road between northwest Spain and the Castilian heartland, Tordesillas is where a treaty once divided the New World and where a queen spent forty-six years confined in a royal monastery.

A walled cathedral city near the Portuguese frontier, its ramparts, palaces and 14th-century castle keep recalling centuries as a contested border stronghold.

A compact walled town on the edge of the Tierra de Campos plateau, now Spain's first 'book village,' its medieval ramparts wrapped around a warren of bookshops.

Rising above the confluence of the Eresma and Voltoya rivers in Segovia province, Coca is defined by one of Spain's best-preserved castles and layers of history stretching from Iron Age city-state to Roman municipium to medieval fortress town.

Granadilla is a complete medieval walled town where nobody lives: emptied in 1965 when the surrounding land was flooded for the Gabriel y Galán reservoir, then adopted by a Spanish government restoration programme, it stands as a unique open-air experience — a fully preserved medieval streetscape where you can walk freely through a ghost town without another visitor in sight.

A cathedral city in Extremadura whose medieval walls, twin cathedrals, and cluster of noble palaces make it one of the most substantial historic centres between Salamanca and Cáceres.

The City of the Admirals in the Tierra de Campos, its arcaded main street and soaring Gothic churches a legacy of wealth from the wool and grain trade.

A castle town in Segovia province whose medieval street plan, intact walls, and castle of the Dukes of Alburquerque make it one of the most complete historic ensembles on the Castilian meseta.

An ancient cathedral city in Cáceres province, its near-complete Roman walls still encircling a historic core of Gothic cathedral, ducal palace, and castle above the Alagón river.

A quiet Castilian town on the Palencia plain, shaped by two names, two medieval churches, and the slow water of the Canal de Castilla beside a restored lagoon.

A fortified hilltop village of slate and granite near the Portuguese border, its castle and walled streets rising above the rivers at the gateway to Lake Sanabria.

Crowned by one of Spain's most dramatic castles — a long white ship of stone on a ridge — now home to the provincial Wine Museum in the heart of Ribera del Duero.