Tordesillas

Overview

Tordesillas is a small Castilian town on the Duero, 25 km southwest of Valladolid, and the place where Castile and Portugal signed the 1494 treaty that divided the Atlantic between them. Two of the buildings that made the town matter are still standing and still open to visitors: the Casas del Tratado, where the negotiators met, and the Real Monasterio de Santa Clara, a Mudéjar royal palace that became a convent of Poor Clares and is now run by Patrimonio Nacional.

Just under 8,000 people live here. Most visitors arrive by accident, because the A-6, the A-62 and the A-11 all meet on the edge of town, and that junction is why Tordesillas survived economically after its political importance drained away. The accident is worth converting into a stop. Half a day covers the monastery, the treaty museum, one church-museum and the medieval bridge, and none of it involves queueing.

The town plan is simple to read on foot. Four streets run out from the arcaded Plaza Mayor, which follows the layout of a Roman camp, and the monuments sit along them or just below, on the slope down to the river. The Duero here is wide and slow and not navigable, and the ten-arched stone bridge across it was the reason the roads came this way in the first place.

The town’s fiestas fall in September, with dates that shift each year. They open on 8 September, the day of the Virgen de la Guía, and run through the romería to the hermitage of the Virgen de la Peña across the river, reached by decorated carts and horses. The best night is the Sábado de Faroles, when every peña parades a handmade lantern the size of a streetlamp behind a brass band, competing for a prize; the parade descends from the old guard patrol along the town walls. The Tuesday bull tournament that once gave Tordesillas its worst headlines was banned by the regional government in 2016; the bull is no longer speared or killed, and the event now runs as El Toro de la Peña.

History

A Roman fort, Turris Sillae, stood on the hill of Siellas above the crossing, part of the defensive line along the Duero. Alfonso X granted the town its charter in 1262, which is when it starts appearing in the record as somewhere kings paid attention to.

The building that became Santa Clara went up in 1340, after Alfonso XI beat the Marinids at the Battle of Salado, and it was paid for with the spoils of that victory. His son Pedro I rebuilt it as a Mudéjar palace between 1354 and 1361, and in 1363 it passed to his daughters by María de Padilla, who turned it into a convent of Poor Clares while it went on doubling as a royal residence. Blanche de Bourbon, the queen Pedro abandoned, was held here from 1353.

Once the first palace was a convent, Enrique III built a second Royal Palace a few steps away, facing the river: two storeys of masonry and rammed earth around two courtyards, with a watchtower on the south front and a raised passage over the street to San Antolín. The Cortes met in Tordesillas several times in the 15th century, and in 1420 the Infante Enrique of Aragón burst into the palace and seized Juan II, who got out with the help of Álvaro de Luna.

Envoys of the Catholic Monarchs and of João II of Portugal met in the Casas del Tratado in 1494 and signed on 7 June, with Pope Alexander VI as intermediary. The agreement drew an imaginary line pole to pole, 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands, giving Castile the western hemisphere and Portugal the eastern one, and it settled a quarrel that was heading for war.

Juana I arrived fifteen years later, in early 1509, on her way to bury her husband Felipe in Granada. The funeral caravan stopped at the Royal Palace and her father Fernando ordered her kept there. She stayed 46 years, until her death on 12 April 1555, receiving over that half century Carlos I, Felipe II and the leaders of the Comuneros.

The town had backed the crown through the wars between Enrique IV and the nobles and again against Juana la Beltraneja in 1476, so its choice in 1520 was a reversal: Tordesillas went with the Comuneros, who set up here and pressed Juana to legitimise their government. After nearly a year the imperial side broke the revolt at Villalar and royal troops under the Count of Haro took the town on 25 May 1521. That ended Tordesillas as a place where Castile was governed.

The Peninsular War brought one last round of history. Napoleon came through in 1808 and met the abbess of Santa Clara; in 1812 Spanish troops besieged the town, the French capitulated on 4 August in the church of San Antolín, the town swore the Constitution of Cádiz on 20 September, and the retreating army blew up the hermitage of La Peña and the sixth arch of the bridge.

Visiting

Start with the Real Monasterio de Santa Clara on Calle Alonso Castillo Solórzano, because it is the only sight here that runs to a timetable. Entry is by guided tour only, about an hour, and the tours leave at 10:15, 12:00 and 16:15 on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday, at 10:15 and 12:00 on Wednesday and Thursday, and at 11:00 and 13:00 on Sunday. The monastery opens Tuesday to Saturday 10:00 to 14:00 and 16:00 to 18:30, Sundays and holidays 10:30 to 15:00, and closes on Mondays all year; the ticket office and the entrance shut an hour before each session ends. The single adult rate is 9 euros with no guiding supplement, since the guided visit is the visit.

The route inside runs from the Arab patio, with its lobed and horseshoe arches, into the Capilla Dorada, an audience hall or oratory that is the only surviving room of Alfonso XI’s building, its blind arcading running under a dome that was originally gilded. Past the refectory and the cloister of the Patio del Vergel come the antechoir and the Coro Largo, which served as the church until the permanent one was consecrated in the 15th century, and the Saldaña chapel, built for Fernán López de Saldaña, comptroller to Juan II, and one of the first flamboyant Gothic interiors in Castile.

Photography without flash is allowed for personal use except where signs say otherwise; tripods and selfie sticks are not. The enclosed community still lives here, so tour numbers are capped.

The Casas del Tratado, two joined palaces looking towards the river, hold the tourist office and the Museo del Tratado de Tordesillas along with a permanent model exhibition called Grandes Miniaturas. The older house is late 15th century, with the royal arms of the Catholic Monarchs over the door beside the shields of its owners, Alfonso González de Tordesillas and Leonor de Ulloa; the second is later 17th century. Both were restored for the treaty’s fifth centenary and listed as Bien de Interés Cultural on 13 June 1996. Opening is Tuesday to Saturday 10:00 to 13:30, then 16:00 to 18:30 from October to May and 17:00 to 19:30 from June to September, Sundays and holidays 10:00 to 14:00, closed Mondays.

San Antolín is the other ticketed interior, a church turned museum on the street named after the treaty, holding art gathered from churches around the town. It was begun in the mid-16th century and finished by Gil de Reynaltos in 1644, its naves under star ribbed vaults on angel-shaped corbels, and its best corner is the Alderete chapel, flamboyant Gothic balustrade and the 1550 alabaster tomb of Pedro de Alderete, Commander of the Order of Santiago. Hours are Tuesday to Saturday 11:30 to 13:30 and 16:30 to 18:30, Sundays and holidays 11:30 to 13:30, and the tourist office advises checking before you walk over, because closures and changes are common.

The Plaza Mayor takes ten minutes and no money. It is a perfect square entered by four streets and porticoed all the way round, shops under the arcades and two floors of houses above whose big windows and balconies were built for watching the fiestas below. The churches of Santa María and San Pedro open only at worship times. Santa María is the largest church in town, Gothic at the head and tower base and Escorial-style classicism above, with a retablo designed by Pedro and Juan de la Torre in 1655 and an 18th-century baroque organ.

Walk down to the bridge last. It is ashlar stone, ten pointed arches with triangular cutwaters between them; a crossing existed here in the 10th century, the present structure comes from a heavy 15th-century rebuild, and the current had to be fought off again in the 16th and 18th. Of the walls that once ringed the town in stone, brick and rammed earth, the piece worth finding is the Torre de Sila on the western side, pierced by a pointed-arch postern. The other stretches are rebuilt.

For a walk rather than a monument, the tourist office publishes marked routes. The Ruta Bajo Duero crosses the medieval bridge and turns downstream past the campsite; the Cuesta de Carracastro climbs to a plateau at 835 metres with wind turbines, a geodesic marker and a watchtower, and on a clear day a view over Tordesillas and eight villages around it.

Tips

• Book Santa Clara online before you drive. Tours bought over the internet are all in Spanish, and if the site shows the slot sold out it is still worth walking to the physical ticket office, which keeps selling until the tour quota is full.

• Wednesday and Thursday have only two tours, both in the morning, so an afternoon arrival midweek means the free 16:00 to 18:30 window or nothing.

• Mondays are dead. The monastery, the San Antolín museum and the tourist office in the Casas del Tratado all close.

• The monastery is shut all day on 1 and 6 January, 3 April, 1 May, and 24, 25 and 31 December in 2026, and can close at short notice for official acts.

• Under-fives go free at the monastery, as do large families, teachers, ICOM and ICOMOS members, official guides and registered jobseekers on production of the relevant card, and visitors with a disability of 33 percent or more plus a companion where the documentation requires one. The ticket can also be bought with the Bono Cultural Joven youth voucher.

• Santa Clara is included in the Patrimonio Nacional annual pass covering all their sites, 50 euros standard and 28 euros reduced, valid a year. That only pays off if you are also doing the Palacio Real in Madrid, El Escorial or Aranjuez on the same trip.

• There is step-free access at Santa Clara and manual wheelchairs to borrow, worth knowing given the age of the building.

• The Castilla y León lace museum on Calle Carnicerías opens by appointment only, so ring ahead or ask the tourist office to arrange it.

• In summer the tourist office sells tickets for the theatrical guided walks, Historias y Leyendas de la Villa, which have run since 2001 and cost 5 euros.

• If you are staying over during the September fiestas, book weeks out. A town of 8,000 with one Parador and a handful of hotels fills fast when the peñas are parading.

• Tordesillas works best as a stop between Valladolid 25 km northeast and Salamanca 96 km southwest.