Tarancón is a small town in the province of Cuenca, on the main road between Madrid and Valencia. It has served as a crossroads for centuries, and the old centre retains a handful of modest monuments — the 16th-century Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, the surviving Puerta de Alarcos from the medieval wall, the Convento de la Concepción, and the Palace of the Duke of Riánsares. At the centre is the recently repaved Plaza Mayor, with its cafés and town hall; on the southern edge of town stands the late nineteenth-century Plaza de Toros. It is a quiet, workaday Castilian town, more a stopping point than a destination in itself.
Tarancon
Castilian crossroads town between Madrid and Valencia, with modest monuments around a renewed Plaza Mayor.
Guide
Day Trips
Tarancón's location on the Madrid–Valencia motorway makes it a natural base for day trips in several directions. Cuenca, with its UNESCO-listed old town and the famous casas colgadas hanging over the gorge, is about an hour away by car. Madrid is just over an hour west on the A-3 — close enough for a day in the Prado and a late lunch back at home. The vineyards around Mondéjar and the Roman site of Segóbriga, near Saelices, are both within a half-hour drive for those with a car.
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Eating Out
Tarancón's location on the Madrid–Valencia highway has supported a long tradition of casas de comidas and roadhouse-style restaurants — usually serving good versions of inland Castilian classics: roast lamb (cordero asado), gachas manchegas, morteruelo, pisto, queso manchego with Tarancón's local wine. The town does not have a celebrated dining scene, but several of the places on the main street are reliable for a hearty Castilian lunch.
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Getting There
Tarancón sits on the A-3 motorway between Madrid and Valencia, about 80 kilometres south-east of Madrid and 270 km north-west of Valencia. By car the trip from Madrid takes a little over an hour.
The town is also served by frequent ALSA buses on the Madrid–Valencia and Madrid–Albacete lines, with the bus station a short walk from the centre. There is no longer a passenger rail service; the old station closed when the AVE high-speed line bypassed the town. If you are travelling between Madrid and Cuenca or Valencia and want a coffee stop, Tarancón is the sensible place to do it.
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Things to Do
Tarancón is the sort of working Castilian market town you stop in for an hour rather than make a destination of — but that hour is rewarded. The 16th-century parish church, the bullring, the renovated Plaza Mayor and the modest Palace of the Duke of Riánsares are all within five minutes' walk of each other.
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01
Iglesia de la AsunciónThe parish church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción is the most substantial monument in Tarancón, a late-Gothic foundation begun in the sixteenth century …Sight
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02
Convento de la Concepción FranciscanaThe Convento de la Concepción is a former Franciscan convent founded in the early seventeenth century on what was then the western edge of …Sight
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03
Palacio del Duque de RiánsaresThe Palacio del Duque de Riánsares is the neoclassical urban palace built in the 1840s for Agustín Muñoz, the morganatic husband of Spain's regent …Sight
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Plaza MayorTarancón's Plaza Mayor (officially Plaza de la Constitución) is the social heart of the town, recently repaved and surrounded by a mix of nineteenth- …Sight
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Puerta de AlarcosThe Puerta de Alarcos (or *Puerta de la Villa*) is the surviving medieval gateway from Tarancón's old town wall, a stone arch tucked between …Sight
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Plaza de TorosTarancón's bullring, built at the end of the nineteenth century, is a circular brick arena of modest size on the south side of town. …Sight
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07
Ermita de Nuestra Señora de RiánsaresA small hermitage on the western edge of town dedicated to the *Virgen de Riánsares*, Tarancón's patron. The shrine is unassuming from outside — …Sight