Caceres
UNESCO World Heritage Site (Old Town Of Caceres, Inscribed 1986), An Intact Walled Town Of Almohad Fortifications And Around Thirty Noble Tower Houses, With No Modern Intrusion Inside The Walls · Caceres, Extremadura
A walled old town that has almost nothing modern in it, which is rarer than it sounds and is why film and television crews keep arriving. Caceres was fought over by Muslim and Christian forces for four centuries, and when Christian nobles finally took it they built fortified tower houses inside the Almohad walls and then spent two hundred years feuding, which is why a small hill town has thirty-odd towers. The Catholic Monarchs eventually ordered most of them shortened to stop the fighting; the Torre de Bujaco survives at full height. Inside the walls there are no cables, no signs and no cars, just golden stone, storks nesting on every tower, and silence after the day visitors leave. Extremadura is the least visited part of mainland Spain and this is the best argument for correcting that after Merida. It is also, quietly, a serious food city, with the dehesa oak pasture around it producing some of the best Iberian ham in the country.
Plaza Mayor, Caceres, Extremadura, 10003, Spain
NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED, and the walled town has none: it is a public neighbourhood with no gate and no ticket, open at any hour and floodlit at night. What has hours are the towers and museums, which keep daytime hours with A LONG MIDDAY BREAK and MONDAY CLOSURES at several. The Concatedral restricts sightseeing during services. There is NO VEHICLE ACCESS inside the walls at any time. WOMAD in May closes streets and fills the town.