Hervás

The town takes its name from the river Santihervás, beside which Templar monks built a hermitage during the Christian Reconquest, using it as a base for resettling the area. After the Templars were expelled, a castle rose on the same ground, and families began to gather around it. In the medieval period a significant Jewish community established itself along the river Ambroz, and the town came under the patronage of Saints Gervasius and Protasius, whose names, compressed over time, are another proposed origin for "Hervás", though some scholars trace it instead to the Latin word for grass.

During the Reconquest, Alfonso VIII of Castile made use of the Templar castle. Hervás was then a village within the territory of Béjar, and in 1396 it passed into the hands of the Zúñiga family. It remained part of the Duchy of Béjar, raised to that rank by the Catholic Monarchs in 1485, until 1816, when Fernando VII granted it the status of a free town.

The royal charter praised it as having "all the qualities to be one of the happiest towns in the kingdom." The administrative reforms of 1833 transferred Hervás from the province of Salamanca to Cáceres, placing it within Extremadura. During the First Spanish Republic, the town briefly declared itself a canton. A railway connecting Plasencia and Astorga opened through here in stages between 1893 and 1896, forming part of a long corridor between Gijón and Sevilla; the station closed to passengers in 1985 and the line shut entirely in 1996.

In 2019, Hervás marked fifty years since being designated a Historic-Artistic Site.

The Jewish quarter, or Barrio Judío, is what most visitors come to see. It occupies the lower part of the town, closest to the Ambroz river, and is regarded as one of the most intact of its kind in Spain, included in the national Red de Juderías network. The streets are narrow, steep, and irregular, lined with houses of adobe and timber beneath tiled roofs.

Some buildings survive much as they were originally built. At the top of the town, the church of Santa María de la Asunción de Aguas Vivas stands on the site of the old castle or fortress, with remnants of the wall still visible around it. The south-facing main doorway, in stone, is an early seventeenth-century classicist design with strong Mannerist elements.

The church of San Juan Bautista, to the southeast, was originally the convent church of the Trinitarian Fathers, founded in 1664. Its façade resembles that of San Nicolás in Valladolid. Inside, the baroque altarpieces, main and lateral, are seventeenth-century work, well gilded and of high quality.

The Palacio de los Dávila, a baroque eighteenth-century building, now houses a museum dedicated to the sculptor Enrique Pérez Comendador and the paintings of his wife, the French artist Madeleine Leroux Morel (1902–1984). The building belonged to the Dávila family until 1959. The town hall occupies the former infirmary of the Franciscan monastery of La Bien Parada.

Its interior courtyard, small but well-proportioned, has eight squat Tuscan stone columns on tall prismatic bases. Also worth noting: a museum of classic motorcycles and cars, claimed to be the first of its type in Europe; the bridge and woodland spot at Pedregoso; the waterfall at La Chorrera, reachable by an hour-and-a-half walk through chestnut and oak forest; a protected chestnut woodland with three walking routes; and a river pool at La Tejea on the road toward La Garganta.

There is no train service to Hervás. By bus, Alsa runs several daily services from Cáceres and Salamanca; Cevesa runs at least one return journey daily from Madrid. By road, the town is 113 km from Cáceres and 98 km from Salamanca, both via the A-66 Ruta de la Plata motorway, exit 436, then 4 km on the EX-205.

From Madrid there are two options: the southern route (289 km) via the A-5 and A-66, or the northern route (240 km) via the A-6/AP-61 through Ávila. The old town is pedestrianised and easy to cover on foot. Eating options range from sandwich bars to restaurants; the source specifically names Mesón Nardi, Restaurante Almirez, Mesón el 60, and La Vaca Brava, with the last two noted for traditional grilled meat.