Go into the imperial apartments and find the window through which Charles V heard Mass from his bed

Find the chair built for a man who could no longer walk and had to be carried

Work out what he gave up: Spain, the Netherlands, Naples, the Empire — abdicated, then this

Walk the gardens and the pool he had made below the terrace

Drive the Vera valley around it and work out why, of everywhere he owned, he chose here

Charles V ruled Spain, the Netherlands, much of Italy and the Holy Roman Empire, abdicated the lot, and came to a Hieronymite monastery in a wooded valley in northern Extremadura to wait for the end. He lived here from 1556 until he died on 21 September 1558. He was crippled with gout, so his rooms were built beside the church choir with a window through which he could hear Mass from his bed, and a chair was made specially so he could be carried. Yuste was named a European Heritage site in 2007.

Yuste: Where the Emperor Went to Die

Go into a secadero and see how it is done — slow oak smoke, upstairs, for days

Taste all three grades side by side: dulce, agridulce and picante

Go to the pimentón museum at Jaraíz de la Vera, which is also where the regulating council sits

Work out why the smoke is not a flourish: slow smoke-drying is what makes the colour and aroma keep

Buy a tin from a mill in the valley and compare it at home with supermarket paprika

Hungarian paprika is air-dried. Pimentón de la Vera is dried over slow oak smoke in two-storey drying houses, which is why it tastes of smoke and why the flavour, aroma and colour hold for so long — the dehydration is slow and gentle. It has been a protected designation of origin in the EU since 22 August 2007, grown and processed in La Vera, Campo Arañuelo, the Ambroz valley and the Alagón and Árrago valleys in northern Cáceres, and the regulating council sits at Jaraíz de la Vera. It comes sweet, bittersweet and hot.

Pimentón de la Vera: Smoke, Not Sunshine

Come in the second half of March for the Cerezo en Flor and get up onto a terrace above the valley floor

Work out the number: about a million and a half trees flowering almost in unison across a fortnight

Find out what a picota is and why it comes off its stalk on the tree

Walk up into the Garganta de los Infiernos reserve to the Los Pilones rock pools

Come back in June for the fruit, which is the other half of the year here

The Jerte valley runs between the Sierra de Gredos and the Sierra de Tormantos, terraced from the river to well up the slopes with about a million and a half cherry trees. In the second half of March they flower almost in unison and the valley turns white for about a fortnight — the Cerezo en Flor, a festival of National Tourist Interest and one of the few genuinely mass floral events in Europe. The cherries themselves have a protected designation; the picota varieties come off the stalk on the tree, which is what distinguishes them. Above the valley the Garganta de los Infiernos is a reserve of rock pools cut by the stream.

The Jerte Valley: A Million Cherry Trees at Once

Walk the judería down to the river and look at how the chestnut frames are built

Work out why the houses lean towards each other over the lane

Walk into the chestnut forest above the town, which is where the building timber came from

Come in late October or November for the Otoño Mágico, when the chestnut valley turns

Find the Convento de los Trinitarios and the old bridge over the Ambroz

A substantial Jewish community established itself beside the Ambroz in the 15th century, and Hervás has one of the best-preserved Jewish quarters in Spain — steep, narrow lanes of houses framed in chestnut timber with adobe infill, leaning into each other over the street, dropping down to the river. The valley behind is chestnut forest, which is where the timber came from and which turns colour spectacularly in autumn. The town is the main settlement of the Ambroz valley in the northern edge of Cáceres province, under the Sierra de Béjar.

Hervás: A Jewish Quarter of Chestnut Beams

Walk the streets and work out that the water channels are drainage, not decoration

Find a batipuerta and work out what a half-height door is keeping out

Find out what chacinas are and why a mountain village at this altitude made them

Work out where the water comes from and how it is fed into every street

Walk up into the Sierra de Béjar above the village, which is where the water starts

Candelario is a mountain village under the Sierra de Béjar with channels of running water — regaderas — cut down the middle of every street, fed from the sierra above, and they are not decorative: the village made chacinas, cured pork products, and the water carried the waste away and kept the streets clean. Each house has a batipuerta, a half-height outer door that keeps the water and the animals out while letting light and air in. The whole thing is a working piece of village engineering and it is protected as a historic ensemble.

Candelario: Built Around Moving Water

Walk from the new cathedral into the old one and find the join where the building stops

Work out what happened: a replacement begun in 1498, the money gone, and the old church kept

Find Rodrigo Alemán's choir stalls and look closely at what is actually carved on them

Walk the walls and work out what happened in 1196, when the Almohads took the town ten years after it was founded

Come for the Martes Mayor, the August market day that is a festival of tourist interest in its own right

Alfonso VIII founded Plasencia in 1186 and stamped its arms with the motto Ut placeat Deo et hominibus — that it may please God and men. Clement III created the diocese in 1189; the Almohads took the town in 1196 after the Castilian defeat at Alarcos, and Alfonso VIII got it back. Placentia in Newfoundland and Placentia in California are both named from it. It has two cathedrals joined together: the old Romanesque-Gothic one of the 13th century, and a new one begun in 1498 to replace it that was never finished, so the money ran out and the two were simply left stuck to each other, with the join visible. The new one has choir stalls by Rodrigo Alemán carved with scenes nobody expects to find in a cathedral.

Plasencia: A Cathedral Left Half Built

Walk the Vía de la Plata through the excavated town

Find out what happened to Cáparra's second arch

Work out why a pre-Roman trading place became a Roman town

Cáparra lies on the Vía de la Plata, the Roman road that runs as the main axis of its grid from north to south. Its name is not Latin but pre-Roman, probably Vettonian, and may mean a place of exchange — it stands where the road to the Jerte valley met the roads north. After Vespasian's edict of 74 AD it became a municipium, and it was built up as a Roman town; its arch is its unmistakable symbol. Renaissance writers recorded two arches here; only one stands now.

Cáparra: A Roman Town on the Vía de la Plata

Walk among the bolos — granite weathered over millions of years into free-standing rounded blocks

Go into the Museo Vostell Malpartida in the old wool-washing works on the waterside

Find out what Fluxus was, and what a German video-art pioneer was doing in Extremadura in 1976

Watch the white storks nesting on top of the granite bolos — one of the most important rock-nesting colonies in Europe, which got Malpartida named European village of the storks in 1997

Work out the sequence: the museum brought the attention, and the attention brought the protection in 1996

Los Barruecos is a field of granite that has been weathering for millions of years into huge rounded boulders — bolos, with names like the Mushroom and the Treasure Rocks — sitting around a set of pools fourteen kilometres from Cáceres. In 1976 Wolf Vostell, a German artist of the Fluxus movement and a pioneer of installation and video art who had settled in Extremadura, put his museum in the old wool-washing works on the edge of the water. The publicity that generated is largely why the place was made a natural monument in February 1996.

Los Barruecos: Granite Boulders and a Fluxus Museum

Walk across it and work out that until 2025 this was a functioning road bridge carrying 237,000 vehicles a year

Stand at river level and look up 58.2 metres at piers that start from different heights of bare rock

Find the inscription on the central arch naming Trajan and the towns that contributed to the cost

Work out where the road went: Augusta Emerita to Bracara Augusta, through country Rome wanted for its metals

Look at the new bridge opened on 20 October 2025 and work out what taking the lorries off has bought

The Roman bridge at Alcántara carries the road from Augusta Emerita to Bracara Augusta over the Tagus: 194 metres long, 58.2 metres high, six arches of unequal height on five piers rising from different levels of rock. The central arch names Trajan and the towns that paid for it. It has been repaired by Charles V and by others, and until very recently it was still carrying about 237,000 vehicles a year — an unrepeatable piece of Roman engineering doing daily work as a road bridge. A replacement opened on 20 October 2025 and finally took the traffic off it.