Albarracin
A Walled Hill Town In Teruel, An Eleventh Century Muslim Taifa Under The Berber Banu Razin, Rendered In Local Pink Gypsum Plaster And Declared A National Monument In 1961 · Albarracin, Aragon
A hill town in the emptiest province in Spain, and routinely voted the prettiest village in the country by people who have seen the competition. Albarracin sits inside a loop of the Guadalaviar river on a rock ridge, walled, with a tower line running up the hillside above the roofs, and it was an independent Muslim taifa in the eleventh century under a Berber dynasty before Christian Aragon took it. What makes it look unlike anywhere else is the plaster: a local gypsum tinted pink with the earth it came from, so the whole town is a dusty rose colour that changes through the day. The streets are narrow enough that upper floors nearly meet overhead, there is no through traffic, and the whole place is small enough to walk in an hour. Teruel province has the lowest population density in Spain, which is why getting here takes longer than the distance suggests and why almost nobody does, which is the whole appeal once you have accepted the drive to get here.
Plaza Mayor, Albarracin, Aragon, 44100, Spain
NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED, and the town has none: it is a public village of public lanes, open at any hour. What has hours are the small ticketed sites - the wall walk, the cathedral and diocesan museum, the restored houses - which keep short daytime hours with a LONG MIDDAY BREAK, Monday closures, and reduced winter opening. The wall walk closes in ice and high wind. The Rodeno rock art trails are open forest with no hours.