Heritage towns in Badajoz
9 towns in this province.
A walled Extremaduran town whose castle, ducal palace, and Gothic church trace six centuries of power — from the medieval frontier between rival Islamic kingdoms to a launching point for Spanish conquistadors in the Americas.
A Templar stronghold in Badajoz whose medieval walls, baroque tower-tops, and layers of Roman, Visigothic, and Moorish history make it one of Extremadura's most richly stratified towns.
Mérida is the Rome of Spain: the capital of Roman Hispania Ulterior Lusitania holds more important Roman remains than anywhere outside Italy — a working theatre still used for performances, an amphitheatre, a circus, a triumphal arch, an aqueduct, and a temple — all in a small modern city that has excavated and displayed its ancient layers with uncommon care.
Olivenza is a town that Portugal still officially claims: ceded to Spain in 1801 and never returned despite the Treaty of Vienna, it retains a distinct Manueline Portuguese character in its white churches and civic buildings that makes it feel like a piece of Lisbon deposited among the olive groves of Extremadura.
Alburquerque's massive medieval castle, the Luna, broods over the Spanish-Portuguese border on a granite outcrop above rolling forest — a frontier fortress built to control the most vulnerable section of the Extremaduran border, now presiding over a village that still feels part of a landscape where the two kingdoms have not quite finished arguing.
Llerena's Plaza Mayor is the finest Renaissance public square in Extremadura: a great arcaded space framed by the loggia of the Church of Nuestra Señora de la Granada and uniform two-storey houses, the product of Santiago Order wealth and the Inquisition's unexpected eye for civic design.
Fregenal de la Sierra is home to one of Spain's great curiosities: a bullring built entirely within the courtyard of a medieval Templar castle, the two structures coexisting in a way that somehow makes both more interesting — and neither functions as a museum.
Hornachos is the village the Moriscos refused to leave: the last large Moorish community in Spain held out here in near-total autonomy until their forced expulsion in 1610, after which they sailed to Morocco and founded the city of Salé — a history so unusual that the village itself still feels set apart from the Spain around it.
Medellín is where Hernán Cortés was born in 1485, a fact the small town on the Guadiana cannot quite decide whether to celebrate — a giant bronze of the conquistador stands on a hill above the river, while the castle that watched him leave for the Indies now watches over a medieval bridge that the Romans built and the Moors rebuilt.