If you go up to the castle of Zuheros and stand in front of the beautiful view it offers, you will see that two colours stand out: the white of the houses in the village and the green of the large olive fields.
These fields have been the livelihood of the local people for a very long time, but in recent times, visitors have also given a little boost to the local economy. And what do they come to see? Well, besides the beautiful spots and whitewashed streets of the village, that castle we told you about, embedded in the rock by the Arabs in the ninth century and conquered by the Christians in the thirteenth. Much later, the lords of the village decided to build a Renaissance palace here and renovated the original building, so today there are remains of both of them perched on an impressive cliff.
But that fortified cliff is not the only impressive thing you will find in the area, because just four kilometres away the land opens up into an enormous and amazing cave: the Cueva de Los Murciélagos. This is not only a natural monument with fantastic shapes but also an archaeological site that has revealed the remains of its many remote inhabitants. Palaeolithic tools, vessels, Neolithic paintings and human bones have remained inside what is one of the largest cavities in the Iberian Peninsula. It seems it was explored by the military during the Civil War and may have been used, at certain difficult moments in history, as a refuge from danger and threats.
At the local Archaeological Museum you will be able to obtain more information and take a close look at a good sample of the materials recovered from the site, of which, by the way, a lot more remains to be excavated.
The castle, the cave and the town itself, with its sixteenth-century church, are the three main focuses for those who visit Zuheros. But there is a fourth, and that is the area surrounding the mountain range, which offers spectacular natural scenery for those who feel like continuing to walk after strolling through the steep streets of Zuheros.
In the heart of the Sierras Subbéticas Natural Park, some beautiful tracks wind between the waterfalls and the canyons of the Bailón River, so go for it and dust off your hiking boots!
