Medina Del Campo

Leave Madrid, heading northwest on the A6 freeway until it turns into NVI and continue north towards Zamora. After a few kilometers, you pass Arevalo, one of the oldest towns in Castile; where, in a 14th-century castle, Isabella spent her early years. She was born in nearby Madrigal de Las Altas Torres, whose lovely Plaza de la Villa is typical of Spain and is dominated by the Church of Saint Martin’s two Mudéjar towers. The Convent of Saint Francis was founded by the saint himself in 1214. If church architecture is your interest, you should see the beautiful Our Lady of the Lugareta Nunnery, 2 kilometers south of town. It constitutes one of the major Romanesque structures in Spain.Next you come to Medina del Campo, historically a very important Castilian market town, but now not really worth a stop. However, the historic market town of Tordesillas, where you cross the Duero, one of Spain’s major rivers, does make an interesting stop. Juana the Mad (Ferdinand and Isabella’s daughter) locked herself away in the Santa Clara Convent here for 44 years after the death of her husband, Phillip the Fair in 1506. The convent has a beautiful patio, and the nearby church has a fabulous artesonado ceiling, which you should not miss. This is also the place where the Spanish and Portuguese signed a treaty in 1494 that divided the world between them. Setting a line some 1,620 kilometers west of the Cape Verde Islands, it resulted in Spain’s ownership of all of South America except Brazil.