Castile-La Mancha webcams

A city on a rock

Cuenca, roughly halfway between Madrid and Valencia, is a medieval town built along a ridge between the gorges of the Júcar and the Huécar, with houses that hang over the cliffs. Its webcams look up the Plaza Mayor to the cathedral, one of the first Gothic cathedrals in Spain, and across the Júcar gorge to its limestone walls.

Castles of the plain

This is the land that gave Castile its name, the country of castles, and the plains of La Mancha, where Cervantes sent Don Quixote to tilt at windmills. A few miles from Toledo, a camera in the village of Guadamur looks over the rooftops to its 15th-century castle, a tall keep inside turreted walls; Toledo itself, the old imperial city above the Tagus, is a short drive away. Further south, in the Campo de Calatrava, the town hall of Calzada de Calatrava keeps a webcam on its main square, whose paving recalls the coin game played there on Good Friday. The town grew up beneath Calatrava la Nueva, the hilltop castle-convent of the medieval Order of Calatrava.

When to watch Castile-La Mancha

Castile-La Mancha is one hour ahead of the UK and Ireland. Most of the region is high, open tableland, so summers are long, hot and dry, with clear skies on almost every camera, while winters bring sharp frosts, fog in the river valleys and, in Cuenca, the odd fall of snow. The low sun of autumn and winter mornings is the best light for the stone of the castles and old towns. Madrid-Barajas airport, with flights from all over Britain and Ireland, is the gateway to all three places, and high-speed trains from Madrid reach Toledo, Cuenca and Ciudad Real.