Berlanga de Duero Castle

Few fortresses allow you to read the passage of time as clearly as the castle of Berlanga de Duero, in the province of Soria. Those who climb up to it will find not a building from a single era, but several overlapping layers that tell how the way of defending a territory changed over a good five centuries and more.

The story of the site begins in the 10th and 11th centuries, when a Muslim fortress stood here. After the Castilian conquest in the 12th century, the stronghold was enlarged with an outer ring of walls that still survives today and is well worth exploring at a leisurely pace, as it is the oldest surviving testimony of that frontier period.

The castle that dominates the view, however, came later. It was built in the 15th century as a seigneurial castle, designed as much to protect as to display the power of its owners. By the 16th century, when artillery had changed the rules of warfare, it was transformed into an artillery fortress, its defences adapted to the new times. That evolution, from medieval enclosure to a stronghold ready for gunpowder, is precisely what makes it so fascinating for the observant visitor.

It is worth devoting your visit to identifying these phases: the outer wall inherited from 12th-century Castile, the seigneurial core and the alterations designed to withstand and return cannon fire. All this in Berlanga de Duero, in Castile and León, a destination that invites you to combine taking in the landscape with a lesson in military history written in stone.