Valencia de Alcántara

People have lived in and around Valencia de Alcántara without interruption from the earliest periods of human prehistory. The oldest material traces go back to the Palaeolithic, but it was the Neolithic revolution that left the most visible mark: a group of 41 dolmens, funerary structures built by communities who used the burial of their ancestors to claim territory. These monuments form one of the most important megalithic concentrations in Europe and were declared a protected archaeological zone in 1992.

The grave goods found inside them give a picture of gradually more complex social life. The town's foundation is bound up, at least in popular tradition, with the Lusitanian Wars, the prolonged conflict between the shepherd-warriors of the chieftain Viriatus and the Roman occupation. Roman historians record that after the surrender of Tautulus, Viriatus's successor, the proconsul Quintus Servilius Caepio granted land to the Lusitanians to settle.

Livy adds that Caepio's own successor, Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus, founded a city called Valentia for veterans of the war. Historians have long debated whether those veterans were Lusitanian fighters or Roman soldiers; modern opinion leans toward the latter, making Valencia de Alcántara a probable Roman military colony. Roman remains in the surrounding area, bridges, an aqueduct, fountains, are cited locally in support of a first-century foundation.

After Rome's collapse, Visigothic settlement left traces in the archaeological record, and the Muslim period continued the town's population without a clear break. The character Valencia de Alcántara carries today, however, took shape after the Order of Alcántara retook the town in the second quarter of the thirteenth century, with the following two centuries consolidating the features still visible in its streets and buildings.

The municipality holds the densest concentration of megalithic monuments in Europe: 41 dolmens spread across three main groups within the town's territory. Many were dismantled over the centuries for building stone, but a large number survive in good condition, some partly because local farmers used them informally as shelters for livestock. The whole site was designated a protected archaeological zone in 1992.

Within the town, the Gothic-Jewish quarter carries official status as a historic ensemble. It contains the synagogue of Valencia de Alcántara, now restored and comparable in form to the synagogue of Tomar in Portugal, alongside hundreds of pointed Gothic doorways and the stone-carved coats of arms on the facades of noble houses and palaces. The Church of Nuestra Señora de Rocamador is a national historic-artistic monument.

Built on the walls of an earlier Romanesque church, it contains a Baroque altarpiece by José de Churriguera and a painting by Luis de Morales, known as "El Divino", of the Virgin with Saints John. The church was the setting in 1497 for the royal wedding between the Infanta Isabel of Aragon, daughter of the Catholic Monarchs, and Manuel I of Portugal, with Queen Isabella of Castile present. The Church of the Encarnación has three naves, a cross plan, plain vaulting, a dome, two towers and a bell-gable; its high altarpiece has held an image of the Christ of the Encarnación since 1624.

The Convent of Santa Clara, formally the Monastery of Nuns of Santa Ana of the Order of Saint Clare, has a notable Renaissance facade. A Roman bridge, a small Roman bridge known as the Pontarrón de los Garabíos, the Monroy Roman fountain, and the remains of a 17-arch aqueduct survive in the area. The castle-fortress, officially dated to the fifteenth century but possibly earlier given the remains of what may be a tower and cistern from the Muslim period, stands above the town.

The main square holds a marble fountain made from Carrara marble donated by the Marquis of Labrador. Across the town, 93 heraldic shields are carved into the facades of the old family houses.