Most beautiful villages in Castilla-La Mancha

Castilla-La Mancha is far more than the windmill-dotted plain that usually springs to mind. Around its edges, where rivers carve deep into the rock and the plateau begins to break apart, you'll find some of the prettiest villages in Castilla-La Mancha, places that best explain its history: frontier towns, fortresses perched on clifftops and hamlets that adapt to the land rather than imposing themselves on it.

The Júcar takes centre stage in two of them. Alarcón, in Cuenca, closes in on itself within a meander of the river, with its walls, its castle of Moorish origin and its medieval churches, along with the striking murals by Jesús Mateo. Further downstream, now in Albacete, Alcalá del Júcar clings to the gorge with its cave houses carved into the rock, an Almohad castle up above and an irregularly shaped bullring quite unlike any other. They share the river and a defensive past, but while one huddles behind its walls, the other spills down the hillside.

Sigüenza, in Guadalajara, tells a different story. In the upper Henares valley, its Celtiberian, Roman and Visigothic roots gave way to centuries as an episcopal see and a stronghold watching over the valley, and it shows in a grander, more stately town. Between the ecclesiastical stone of Sigüenza and the cliffs of the Júcar lies much of the character of this land.