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Villanueva de  la Jara, Cuenca, España

It is one of the most important towns in the province of Cuenca, which guards an important urban center with great homogeneity in its buildings of "manchego" type, preserving a good number of beautiful fronts with lordly front doors.

The Roman ruins show us a town previous to the Arabic foundation, which had walls of which a part remains. It was named "Villa" by the Catholic Kings.

The Plaza Mayor (major square) is an important set of Renaissance formation, and the principal historical streets, with very typical buildings, originate from it. The Town hall, of s. XVI, with Renaissance front, of two floors, the first one with gallery "porticada" and the discharge with arches closed by glass windows. Attached to the Town hall by a tower of three bodies we find the Pósito, very restored, of s. XV-XVI.
 

To another side of the square we find Villa Enriqueta, of 1892, palace turned into houses of several families, and the Masso Inn of s. XVI, with a shed to a back street and a central court.

The parochial church of the Asuncion is a sumptuous building of big proportions, of the XV-XVI centuries, with high walls of buttresses and narrow large windows between these. It has two front plateresque facades, with very rich ornamentation that of the north and simpler and covered with porch that of the south; to the feet the Gothic one which is supposed to be the rest of the former castle of the Marquess of Villena. The tower is plateresque in its completion, massive in its two principal bodies. The interior is of an alone ship with lateral chapels, emphasizing the major altar with a baroque altarpiece of great size. To the feet of the tower there exists a chapel that is supposedly belonged to the castle, on which remains the church was built and in the same place where, according to the tradition, there was an Arabic mosque.

In the lateral chapels, there are several altarpieces of great value, Gothic and Renaissance, and in the chapel of the Rosario one baroque and a dome with exuberant decoration.

Near the parochial one there is the church of Our Lady of Snow, where a Gothic image of a Virgin and a neoclassic altarpiece are kept. The convent of Carmelite, in the Santa Ana street, founded by Saint Theressa in 1580, with church and cloister and in which stand out several Renaissance altarpieces of great quality, Pictures and a Mudejar covered ceiling.

Among the lordly houses that we will find in our walk along the town, we emphasize those of the streets Jesus Casanova 39 and 41, one Gothic and the other one from the Renaissance, del Mercado, Madrigal, Mayor, San Francisco ... being the two bests the Alfonso Clemente Aristegui's lordly house, which was the minister of Carlos III and the lordly house of the number 3 of the street of Santa Ana, of the XVII century.

In the suburbs, close to San Clemente's highway, a Gothicroll of justice remains of 3,5 meters of height and profusely decorated.

In its surroundings, they exist a great number of caves perforated in difference levels destined to the grow of mushrooms, being this population one of the biggest producting ones of Spain.

Cuenca es the capital of my
province and it's a beautiful city.
 

Albacete is the biggest city
close to my town. It is also
the biggest one in the region.
 
 

Motilla is 10 miles far from
my town. I went there to
highschool for 2 years.
 

...And my other 3 years
of highschool I went to
Quintanar del Rey.
 

Mi first time abroad 
was in Brighton, in England.
I spent there the best
month of my entire life.
 

Ciudad Real is the city
where I went to the University.
There, I spent 4 great years.
 

My second time in England, 
this time in Birmingham for 3 months.
 

New Concord, OH, is where 
I spent a year as a 
Spanish TA after
graduating from my university.