Castle of Ampudia (Palencia)

Eastern view of the castle

Ampudia Castle is a medieval fortress built between 1461 and 1488 by García López de Ayala, Lord of Ayala and Salvatierra and son of Pedro García de Herrera, the first holder of the Ampudia estate. García's successor, Pedro Ayala y Rojas, embraced the comunero cause, leading to the armed conflict known as the Battle of Ampudia between supporters of Emperor Charles I of Spain and troops led by Bishop Antonio de Acuña. In 1528, the castle housed the sons of the French monarch Francis I as hostages after the Battle of Pavia. It is an early example of a Castilian stately castle-palace, a jewel of the region's civil architecture, and is in magnificent condition following the careful restoration undertaken in the 1960s by Eugenio Fontaneda. The building has a trapezoidal floor plan, turrets at the corners, the southwest one corresponding to the homage tower, and a moat spanned by a drawbridge. It is surrounded by a barbican wall with cylindrical towers. The parade ground has three porticoed galleries, each three stories high, with segmental arcades, the upper story being more modest.

Staircase leading to the bridge at the entrance to the castle

Upper platform of the stone bridge

Barbican towers that protected the entrance to the castle

Detail of the castle's drawbridge hatch

Detail of the battlements with their loopholes indoor the outer wall

Space between the outer wall and the body of the castle