The clifftop village above the Vero canyon — Aragon's best-kept secret
Alquézar is a medieval village of barely 300 people perched above the Río Vero canyon in the Somontano comarca of Huesca, Aragon — its 10th-century Moorish citadel converted into a collegiate church that still dominates the skyline from every approach. The village is the entry point for the Pasarelas del Vero, a dramatic boardwalk trail through a narrow limestone canyon with hanging walkways above the river. The surrounding Sierra de Guara is Spain's premier canyoning destination, and the old town's alabaster carved doorways and medieval arcades feel genuinely unchanged.
Alquézar was founded by the Moorish governor Abd al-Rahman II in the 9th century as a strategic stronghold — 'al-qasr' (the fortress) in Arabic directly gives the village its name. The Aragonese king Sancho I reconquered the village in 1067 and converted the mosque within the fortress into a Romanesque collegiate church, whose cloister contains 11th-century Romanesque capitals and painted murals from the same period. The village and its church were a stopping point on one of the lesser-known Camino de Santiago routes through Aragon.