Cuenca, the Hanging Houses and the gorge city: a self-guided walk

By Alleytale

The Hanging Houses and the gorge city

Cuenca's old town grew on a narrow spur between the Júcar and Huécar gorges, and Castile took it in 1177. The walk passes the convent of La Merced in the old Alcázar quarter, drops to San Miguel on the Júcar gorge, climbs to the cathedral begun after that conquest, goes on to the houses hanging over the Huécar, crosses the iron bridge to the convent that faces them, and returns along Calle Alfonso VIII past the tall houses called skyscrapers.

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The stops

1. 1Plaza Mayor

   Cuenca's Plaza Mayor is a slightly triangular square bounded by the cathedral, the town hall and the convent of the Petras, and it became the town's main square only in the 15th century, when it replaced the Plaza del Carmen as the place where the council met. The baroque town hall was designed by Jaime Bort, and an open arcade on its ground floor lets the main street run through into the square. In the San Mateo fiestas each September, which recall the conquest of 1177, the standard of Alfonso VIII leaves the cathedral to spend a night in the town hall.

   

2. 2Convento de la Merced

   In 1648 the Mercedarian friars moved into a 16th-century palace built by the Hurtado de Mendoza family in the old Alcázar quarter, and one of its corner towers is still embedded in the building. The building keeps walls of that palace, whose owners, the marquises of Cañete and Hurtado de Mendoza, were viceroys of Peru and founders of Cuenca in Ecuador, the other Cuenca. In 1924 the town hall handed the convent to the bishopric in exchange for the Hanging Houses, and the baroque façade of its church is described as very original.

   

3. 3Iglesia de San Miguel

   San Miguel is one of the oldest parishes in Cuenca, a church from the 13th century whose apse survives from that time, standing on a platform in the Júcar gorge beside the old wall. In the 16th century the architect Esteban Jamete designed its oval dome, decorated with flowers. The diocese handed the church to the city council in the middle of the 20th century, and it is now a concert hall.

   

4. 4Catedral de Santa María y San Julián

   Alfonso VIII of Castile took Cuenca on 21 September 1177 after a nine-month siege, and a cathedral was begun on the foundations of the main mosque. Work started in 1182 and was largely done by 1257, making it one of the earliest Gothic cathedrals in Spain, built by French stonemasons and said to have been inspired by Alfonso's English wife, Eleanor, whose Norman influence left its mark. Much of the façade is a rebuild: lightning brought down the Giraldo bell tower in 1902 and the front was partly reconstructed in neo-Gothic style by 1910.

   

5. 5Palacio Episcopal

   The bishop's palace was set up in 1250 in houses that the cathedral chapter gave to Bishop Mateo Reinal, houses that were probably Muslim in origin, and some Arabic inscriptions and a door decorated with plasterwork survive from them. Bishop Diego Ramírez had the palace remodelled from 1535 by Pedro de Alviz, and the courtyard from that work is still well preserved, with three Gothic arches on each side below an upper gallery. The building houses the Diocesan Museum, whose pieces include works by El Greco and the Calvary of Alfonso VIII from the end of the 12th century.

   

6. 6Casas Colgadas

   These houses with wooden balconies jut out over the cliff above the Huécar gorge, and only three of their kind survive: the Casa de la Sirena and the two Casas de los Reyes. They have been private homes and, for a time, the town hall, and records of them go back to at least the 15th century. In 1963 the artist Gustavo Torner suggested them to his friend Fernando Zóbel, who was looking for a home for a museum of abstract art, and the Museum of Spanish Abstract Art opened in them on 1 July 1966.

   

7. 7Puente de San Pablo

   The first bridge here was a stone one, built between 1533 and 1589 on the initiative of the canon Juan del Pozo to link the convent of San Pablo with the town, and it later collapsed. The present iron and wood bridge was built in 1902 and opened on 19 April 1903, designed by the engineer José María Fuster y Tomás. It is 106 metres long and up to 39 metres high, rests on the stone piers of the old bridge, and is one of the best places to see the Hanging Houses from.

   

8. 8Convento de San Pablo

   The canon Juan del Pozo founded this Dominican convent in 1523, and the church was designed by the brothers Juan and Pedro de Alviz with a Gothic structure and Renaissance decoration. It stands on a promontory over the Huécar gorge facing the Hanging Houses. Since 1993 the convent has housed a Parador, and its church holds the Espacio Torner, opened in December 2005 with forty works by the Cuenca artist Gustavo Torner.

   

9. 9Iglesia de la Santa Cruz

   Santa Cruz was one of the first parishes of Cuenca, a modest single-nave church that was rebuilt and reworked over the centuries, and its doorway is 16th-century work. Because the church looks out over the Huécar gorge there was no room behind the altar, so the sacristy was placed under the main chapel. On 27 March 2019 it opened as one of the venues of CORPO, a centre of modern and contemporary art run by the Roberto Polo Collection Foundation.

   

10. 10Los Rascacielos

    Cuenca's Rascacielos, its skyscrapers, is the traditional name for the houses on the odd-numbered side of Calle Alfonso VIII, which have three or four storeys on the street but can have more than ten at the back. They hang over the San Martín quarter and look towards the Huécar gorge. Calle Alfonso VIII was the main artery of the city until the 19th century.

    

11. 11Casa del Corregidor

    In the early 16th century the corregidor's house stood in the Alcázar quarter in a building that also served as a prison, and around 1541 the town council agreed to build a new jail because it thought the city badly needed one. That jail was demolished in the middle of the 18th century, and the present house on Calle Alfonso VIII was built on its site, designed by José Martín, with three storeys on the front and seven at the back. The cellars were where the prison was, and a stair climbs from the entrance hall to the corregidor's own rooms.

    

12. 12Torre de Mangana

    The name Mangana has been used since the late 16th century for the city's clock, and the tower stands on the site of the old Andalusi alcázar, later the Mudéjar quarter and then the Jewish quarter. Anton van den Wyngaerde drew a square tower here in 1565; in 1926 it was remodelled in neo-Mudéjar style with colourful plaster decoration inspired by Islamic, mostly North African, motifs, and a restoration designed in 1968 by Víctor Caballero gave it the fortified look it has now. It has a clock on one wall, and a recording of bell chimes can be heard in the old town every quarter of an hour.

    

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