Zorita de los Canes

The guard at Recópolis hands over a VR headset and suddenly a six-year-old Visigoth girl is tugging at your sleeve, inviting you inside her 6th-century palace. It’s the sort of tech that normally belongs in a London museum, yet here it sits beside the Tajo river, 90 minutes from Madrid, in a village that still has only one bar and no cash machine.

Zorita de los Canes climbs a rocky spur at 590 m, high enough for the temperature to drop five degrees on summer evenings and for winter winds to whip straight across the Meseta. The castle keep – currently off-limits while masons pin the walls back to the cliff – stares down on barely sixty houses, a bakery that doubles as the post office, and a sign warning lorry drivers that the onward road to Recópolis is “no recomendable” for anything wider than a Sprinter van.

Medieval frontier, modern silence

This was once the headquarters of the Knights of Calatrava, the crusading order paid to hold the line between Christian kingdoms and al-Andalus. You can trace their handiwork in the ashlar blocks that ring the summit and in the gatehouse so narrow a 4×4 scrapes both mirrors. Inside the walls the streets are cobbled, the houses roofed with thick Arab tile, and the loudest noise is usually the storks clacking on the ruined tower opposite the church. Visit on a Tuesday in February and you’ll have the entire hill to yourself; come on Easter Monday and you’ll share the viewpoint with perhaps a dozen Madrileño families and one over-excited spaniel.

The parish church keeps the same hours as the baker: open at dawn, locked by two, reopened if you knock loudly enough. Step inside and the air smells of beeswax and grain – the floor rises and falls like a ship’s deck because the building follows the rock beneath. There is no explanatory panel, no gift shop, just a single 16th-century retablo whose paint is flaking in exactly the way conservationists in Britain would seal behind glass.

A city that vanished

Three kilometres downstream the river widens into a shallow lagoon where herons hunt among the reeds. On the far bank Recópolis rises like a mirage: Visigoth King Leovigildo’s founding of 578 AD, abandoned two centuries later, lost until a ploughman struck a column base in 1944. Today half the basilica stands to window height, the palace walls still carry their red-and-white brick stripes, and the VR tour lets you lift a virtual amphora while the child-guide explains why olive oil was taxed by the jug. Guided visits run twice daily, maximum fifteen people; book online the night before or the archaeologist stays home. Entry €6, concession €4, exact change appreciated because the ticket printer jams on twenties.

The footpath between castle and ruins follows the old supply track: 40 minutes, negligible gradient, goats for company. Mid-April the verges are speckled with purple flax and the air smells of wild thyme; mid-July you need two litres of water and a hat, and the only shade is an abandoned shepherd’s hut whose roof collapsed in 2019. Adder country, so stick to the path and keep dogs close.

What you’ll eat – and what you won’t

Zorita’s solitary bar opens at seven for farm workers and doesn’t bother with a written menu. Order a caña and you’ll be offered whatever is simmering on the domestic stove behind the counter: usually cocido stew in winter, migas fried crumbs with chorizo in summer. They will, if asked politely, make a cheese-and-tomato baguette for children or vegetarians, but you’ll feel like you’ve asked for a salad at a rugby club. The nearest proper restaurant is down the hill in the Posada de Zorita, where a three-course lunch runs to €18 and the partridge stew tastes like gamey beef. House wine is from Valdepeñas and costs €2.50 a glass; they accept cards, unlike the bar, so long as the router hasn’t been knocked out by the previous night’s storm.

Stock up before you arrive: the last supermarket is 25 km away in Sacedón, and the village bakery sells out of bread by eleven. If you’re self-catering, bring coffee – the local supermarket’s idea of “international” is Nescafé decaf.

When to go – and when to stay away

Spring and autumn are the sweet spots. April mornings hover around 12 °C, perfect for the climb to the castle viewpoint; afternoons reach 22 °C and the limestone smells warm and slightly metallic. October brings scarlet sumac on the cliff faces and the grain harvest rattling past on tractors older than the driver. In May the storks hatch; in September the river is low enough to paddle.

August is a furnace. By midday the rock radiates heat like a storage heater and even the lizards seek shade inside the church porch. If you must come, start early: the track to the viewpoint is in full sun by nine, and the castle gate will still be locked whatever the hour. Winter is bright but bitter; the road ices quickly at this altitude and the CM-200 is not gritted before ten. On grey days the whole plateau feels hollowed out, and Recópolis under low cloud is less “ancient city” than “pile of bricks with excellent wifi”.

The practical grit

Accommodation: four doubles in the Posada, €70–90 B&B, closed January. Otherwise stay in Sacedón (15 min) or camp by the river at Cifuentes, both with more beds than diners. Petrol and cash: fill up and withdraw in Guadalajara or Tarancón before you turn onto the CM-200; the village ATM vanished in 2020 and card machines die when the generator hiccups. Mobile coverage: patchy on the approach, fine on the ridge. Offline maps essential because the road signs disappear at the same rate the potholes multiply.

Castle access: still shut at time of writing. Check the Diputación de Guadalajara website the morning you leave – they post closure notices only in Spanish and usually after 9 a.m. Even locked, the exterior walk delivers the best photographs: cross the footbridge by the river, turn right, climb the goat track for five minutes, look back.

Worth the detour?

Zorita de los Canes suits drivers already crossing the Meseta: an hour’s diversion between Madrid and Cuenca, long enough for coffee, castle views, and a VR flirtation with the sixth century. Stay longer only if you like your history uninterrupted and your nights black-out quiet. The village offers little comfort, zero nightlife, and some of the starriest skies in central Spain. Bring walking boots, exact change, and the phone number of the Recópolis guide. Expect nothing to be open when it ought to be, and you’ll leave happier than most.