Historic Walled Town of Cuenca
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How it came to be
In Roman times the site of Cuenca was uninhabited. Muslim forces took the area in 714 and later built the fortress of Kunka on a rock between the gorges of the Júcar and Huécar rivers and ringed it with a wall about 1 km long. It guarded the heart of the Caliphate of Córdoba and prospered on farming and textiles, and in the 11th century it came under the taifa of Toledo.
The town changed hands many times. From early 1177 Alfonso VIII of Castile besieged it with Ferdinand II of León, Alfonso II of Aragon and the military orders; the town fell on 21 September 1177 and the citadel in October. Cuenca was given its own charter of laws, a diocese was set up in 1183, and the town received Spain's first Gothic cathedral.
The hanging houses, built in the 15th century, jut out over the Huécar gorge. The textile trade declined in the 18th century, and the war against Napoleon's troops and the Carlist capture of 1874 brought heavy damage. In 1902 the cathedral's bell tower collapsed and the façade was rebuilt. The walled town was inscribed in 1996, and the hanging houses now hold the Museum of Spanish Abstract Art.
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