Travel Guide Castril

A village on a mountainside, dominated by the silhouette of its peña, rock, with the Cristo del Sagrado Corazón at the top, this is the first vision that emerges when you get near this village of more than 2,100 inhabitants, formerly called Castril de la Peña. It is understandable that the Romans used it to set up a military camp and then a villa and that the Arabs made it a fortified city called Qastalla, which was not conquered until 1489 by the Catholic Monarchs. Rebuilt as we perceive it today and repopulated after the expulsion of the Moorish populations, the urban centre is characterized by its streets with steep slopes and by the uniformity of its fairly low, white and closed facades. At the foot of the Peña, noteworthy is the 16th century Nuestra Senora de los Angeles church, in Renaissance style, with a plateresque façade. It is also a very good starting point for discovering the Castril Natural Park, with its tormented relief and full of ravines and gorges.