We start our tour of Cuenca here. The name might be misleading, don’t expect finding neither tall buildings nor old monuments, because this place is preserved to show you the marvels of Cuenca’s natural environment. Júcar River, on its way through Uña and Villalba de la Sierra, creates a huge and impressive canyon. It is here, at an altitude of almost 1.500m, where nature has treated itself with one of those whims that fill the traveler with astonishment: The Enchanted City.

The Enchanted City is a natural spot declared Natural Site of National Interest in 1929. Nowadays it finds itself inside the borders of the Natural Park of Cuenca’s Mountain Ranges (PNSC), included among the specially protected areas due to its exceptional geomorphologic value, of international relevance.

The amazement it provokes has brought numerous film creators who found inspiration in this astonishing cinema scenery, embellished by the silence of the mountains. A movie-deserving landscape on which amazing artists such as Sophia Loren, Frank Sinatra, Cary Grant, Oliver Stone or Arnold Schwarzenegger have set foot.

Here, the karst modelling has created whimsiful shapes in the rock that will amaze the visitor. These worlwide known geological phenomena are shapes sculpted by means of water, wind and ice erosion. A submarine landscape hidden in the jurassic Sea of Thetis, the Mediterranean Sea’s ancestor. Its paths invite you to stroll around intriguing rocky shapes reminiscing human figures, objects or animals with a difficult to understand precision, building a delirious city, a city that seems to be asleep through some mysterious spell. You will get to know all its secrets with this visit to the Encanted City.

With this visit to The City of Cuenca, declared World Heritage Site by UNESCO, you will explore one of the cities in Spain with a largest historical riches, both material and intangible.

The city/landscape Cuenca is a town built on a stripe of land surrounded by Júcar and Huécar rivers’ gorges, providing and unmatchable natural landscape to an urban design stopped in time. These gorges enclose a huge historical heritage located in between two cliffs, it is a city surrounded by thousands of years of natural geological formations, carved by both rivers bit by bit creating stone structures that make the observer shrink.

The Heritage Cuenca City is a town that opens itself for the visitor as a perfect fusion between modern art and tradition. It is a must for the traveller to explore it’s historical center, getting lost through the maze of charming narrow streets, hosting both important pieces of religious heritage, such as churches, convents and seminaries where you can perceive this worship tradition so rooted in this city, and also important museums such as the Abstract Art Museum, the Antonio Pérez Foundation or the Cathedral’s Secret Museum, a nice example of regional sacred art guarding important artworks from the Romanesque period until the current day, where paintings by Martín Gómez el Viejo and El Greco are among the most precious. A city of contrast, where modernity and tradition coexist.

The most impressive building in the city is Our Lady of Grace’s Cathedral, the first one in Spain built entirely in Gothic Style, built by Alfonso VIII’s comission. Inside, the effect of light through the stained glass takes the visitor on a mystical tour that never ceases to astonish them by admiring a structure that goes from the XIIth century to Baroque style in its last chapels.

Regarding the Hanging Cuenca, everyone knows about its Hanging Houses, good example of popular architechture from Cuenca where its balconies invite us to just admire the void, becoming the authentic icon of the city. Just as from Saint Martin’s Skyscrapers, first buildings in the world of more tan ten floors. San Pablo’s Bridge, designed by Eiffel’s workshop, turns into a walk for the bold and an adventure for the height-scared, but it leaves everyone with the same feeling of finding themselves in one of the highlights of the city. San Pablo’s Bridge, designed by Eiffel’s workshop, turns into a walk for the bold and an adventure for the height-scared, but it leaves everyone with the same feeling of finding themselves in one of the highlights of the city. We feel the same by sitting at the Castle District from where the visitor can perceive the city at their feet, since its lookouts look directly over a free fall to the gorges that seem to lean out to the most inscrutable depth.

We must not forget the Taste Cuenca, this city is also defined by its unique flavours, its succulent meals and its traditional dishes. It is mandatory to not leave the city have you not tried before its morteruelo, its ajoarriero, some gachas or a lamb roast, and daring —before even knowing what it is made of— to eat one zarajo. All the formerly mentioned should be paired with local wine and finished with the local sweet made with almonds and honey, alajú, and with some envigorizing resolí.