Castle of Manzanares El Real (Madrid)

Eastern view of the castle

The Mendoza castle was built on a Romanesque-Mudejar hermitage. The works began around the year 1475 by the first Duke of Infantado and finished by his son, Don Íñigo López de Mendoza, with Juan Guas, architect of the Catholic Monarchs, participating in its construction. The castle has a square plan, it is topped with three circular crenellated towers and an octagonal keep, all decorated with the traditional Elizabethan balls. It has an outer wall or barbican that surrounds it in its entirety. The parade ground consists of two superimposed galleries of Elizabethan Gothic style where the rooms and court rooms. It currently houses an Interpretation Center on the Middle Ages, as well as a collection of tapestries, paintings, armor and furniture from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

Manzanares El Real

Panoramic view of the town with the Sierra de Guadarrama in the background

Manzanares El Real is a municipality in the province and Autonomous Community of Madrid, located at the foot of the Sierra de Guadarrama and on the banks of the Santillana reservoir formed by the waters of the Manzanares river. King Alfonso X the Wise incorporated these places into the Crown and at the end of the 14th century Juan I ceded the territory to Pedro González de Mendoza, being precisely with the saga of the Mendoza when it is then El Real de Manzanares lives its maximum splendor, during the following two centuries. It should be noted that Manzanares is the cradle of Madrid's Autonomy, its castle being chosen in 1982 for the celebration of the act of constitution of the Assembly of Parliamentarians of Madrid.

Villaviciosa de Odón (Madrid)

View of the castle from the south-east

The Castle of Odón was built at the beginning of the 15th century on the initiative of the marquis of Moya, being destroyed in the year 1521 during the uprising of the Comuneros and sent to rebuild the royal architect Juan de Herrera at the request of don Diego Fernández de Cabrera. Initially it had triangular shape, who brought a new tower foursquare in a new vertex to be Herrera. It currently hosts the Historical File of the Air Force.

Villaviciosa de Odón

Town Hall

Villaviciosa de Odón is a municipality in the province and Autonomous Community of Madrid, located in the west of the metropolitan area of the capital. Its origins date back to the visigothic period as evidenced by the remains of the ancient necropolis found from Calatalifa, a name which comes from the arabic Qal'at' at Al-Khalifa (Caliph castle).

Castle of Villarejo de Salvanés (Madrid)

West view of the homage tower of the castle

The castle of Villarejo de Salvanés was built in the 13th century to strengthen the christian conquests of the catchment area of the river Tagus. Only remains the homage tower, constituting an architectural exhibition unique in Spain, having cylindrical towers grouped in the sides and not only on the edges, as it is usual in the spanish military architecture.

Villarejo de Salvanés

Town Hall

Villarejo de Salvanés is a village located south-east of the Autonomous Community of Madrid in the so-called Las Vegas region, between the rivers Tagus and Tajuña. He was head of the Encomienda  of Castile of the Order of Santiago, founder of the first settlement in the mid-thirteenth century.