Spain's rose-red medieval village — Teruel's secret, carved from the rock
Albarracín is one of Spain's most visually arresting medieval towns — a settlement of rose-red ochre houses built into a horseshoe-bend cliff above the Guadalaviar River in Teruel province, its walls and towers blending so completely into the reddish sandstone that the town appears to grow from the rock. The medieval street plan is intact, the 16th-century cathedral contains Flemish tapestries, and the surrounding Sierra de Albarracín is world-famous among sport climbers for its sandstone boulders. Population: around 1,000.
Albarracín was the capital of a small independent taifa kingdom from 1012 to 1104, ruled by the Berber Banu Razin clan (from whom the town's name derives — 'Ibn Razin's fortification'). After passing to Castile and then Aragon, it became one of the few medieval Spanish towns granted special judicial independence under its own fueros (laws) from 1184 — a status so fiercely guarded that Albarracín remained semi-autonomous outside the Kingdom of Aragon until the 18th century, which explains why its medieval character was never overbuilt by later development.