Tour description

Architecture, Art and Culture.

Cuenca, a city hanging over the abyss makes everyone who walks their most beautiful treasures fall in love

ITINERARY

• 8.30 Departure from Madrid
• 11:00 Panoramic tour of Huécar River’s gorge
• 11:30 Guider tour through the Medieval District
• 12.45 Cathedral guided tour
• 13:45 Free time for lunch
• 15:30 Tour of Abstract Art Museum (Hanging Houses) and San Pablo Convent
• 16:45 Departure to Madrid
• 18:15 Arrival to Madrid

DETAILED ITINERARY

We will leave Madrid from the city center heading Cuenca escorted by our tour guide. Along the way, we will briefly stop at a restaurant, where we will have a moment to have some coffee or visit the restrooms. We will move on to the City of Cuenca, which we will start exploring through a panoramic tour of Huécar River’s Gorge, taking us below the cliffs and to the highest área of the city, the Castle’s District. Starting there, we will go on an easy walking tour, always downslope, that will take us through the Medieval area’s most iconic spots and monuments until our arrival at Cuenca’s Cathedral. Our guide will show it to us from inside for almost one hour and, when we are finished, we will have 1:45hrs free time for lunch and maybe some shopping. After meeting again at the Cathedral’s main entrance, we will go inside the famous Hanging Houses, hosting the Abstract Art Museum. We will conclude our visit by walking along San Pablo’s Bridge and arriving at San Pablo’s Convent for a visit inside, where the Parador Nacional de Turismo is.

We will have finished our tour and we will set course to Madrid, to arrive at 19:30 to the spot where we were picked up in the morning.

CUENCA CITY

The City of Cuenca, declared World Heritage Site by UNESCO, is one of the cities in Spain with the largest historical richness, 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 an 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 traveler to explore its historical center, getting lost through the maze of charming narrow streets, hosting 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 commission. His wife Eleanor Plantagenet of England, sister to Richard Lionheart, introduced the Gothic language in the stonework. It is considered to be the first entirely Gothic cathedral in Castile, and it was permanently dedicated to Saint Mary in the year 1208. 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, a good example of popular architecture from Cuenca where its balconies invite us to just admire the void, becoming the authentic icon of the city. Just as Saint Martin’s Skyscrapers, the first buildings in the world of more than 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. We feel the same by sitting at the Castle District from where the visitors 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.

Inside the iconic Hanging Houses, we will bump into one of the most significant exhibitions of mid-twentieth-century Spanish art: The Abstract Art Museum. This museum displays more than a hundred paintings and sculptures, being one of the most complete collections of Spanish artists from the abstract movement from the fifties and sixties, image in some ways of the revolutionary ideas formerly developed by Picasso, Miró, and Gris. In it, we can find a sample of the Works by artists such as Canogar, Chillida, Feito, Millares, Oteiza, Tàpies, Torner, and Zobel.

All of these Cuencas, the Heritage Cuenca City, the City/Landscape Cuenca, the Hanging Cuenca, the Taste Cuenca, and the Holy Cuenca… take the visitor deep into endless feelings, emotions, and memories… making all who admire it fall head over heels before its beauty. Without hesitation: Cuenca is one of a kind!

Tour duration

Offered languages

We started the tour...

8:30 a.m. - Plaza del Conde de Casal, 6, Madrid.

We finished the tour...

19:30 - Arrival to Plaza del Conde de Casal, 6, Madrid.

Included in this tour

• Transport
• Native bilingual guide
• Tickets
• Guided visit to Medieval Cuenca

Not included in this tour

No service not specified in the “Includes” section

Additional information

You can consult the cuencatour.com app where you will obtain information on where to eat, what the weather will be like on your visit, our guides and be able to see the opinions of other travelers or share yours

Cancellation is free of charge until 24 hours before departure time

100% fee in case of cancellation less than 24 hours prior to departure time

Languages: Spanish

Bilingual guide up to 30 visitors. In case of more than 30 seats sold, the company will provide a guide in Spanish and a guide in a second language

Duration: 11 hours

Departures on Thursday

The company has the right to cancel if the total amount of passengers is less than 4

We accept both digital or printed vouchers

The visitors must be at the meeting point at least 10 minutes before departure time

Rates and general terms valid until 12/31/2024