Mariana

Between the provincial capital and the mountains

Mariana lies in Serranía Media (middle Serranía), a few kilometres from Cuenca, where arable fields begin to give way to wooded hills of pine and limestone. From here the road climbs to the Natural Park, Ciudad Encantada or Laguna de Uña. It is less cold than the mountains. Unlike almost all mountain villages, it has maintained its population over the last thirty years.

The 13th-century church of San Pedro is one of the resettlement churches and preserves almost all its Romanesque plan: a nave with a semicircular apse, bell gable at the west end and two doorways facing one another.

Mariana’s wool-washing works

In the 18th century Mariana had a wool-washing works, near that of Villalba de la Sierra. It belonged to Baltasar Pedro del Castillo Frías Jaraba, a hereditary Cuenca councillor and major livestock owner.

The Mariana river and its woodland

The Mariana river rises north of Zarzuela and flows into the Júcar beside El Chantre, between the Mariana and Sotos pastures. On sandy soils, the woodland mixes maritime pine with Spanish junipers, common junipers, holm oaks and Portuguese oaks, with gum rockrose and heather below: fine heather branches were made into brooms and its hard wood into charcoal. Resin tapping has resumed in the pine forest in recent years. The Cuenca and Rodrigo Ardaz drove roads pass through the municipality.

La Torre dam

Between Mariana and Villalba, the Júcar pools behind La Torre dam, which diverts water along a channel to a small power station; according to guide Fernando Carreras, the station takes its name from a tower on its own building. In 2021 the track was closed by a chain and used by workers. Downstream, stone partitions slow the current. Poplars, willows and alders line the banks alongside holm oaks and pines, with herons, ducks and cormorants on the water. Beside the road, a statue of a shepherd on a seasonal livestock journey recalls the drove road.

The Chantre bridge

Near Mariana, on the way to Cuenca, the Júcar is crossed by the Chantre bridge, with a single round arch. Locally it is said to be Roman, but popular-history writer Francisco Javier Rodríguez Laguía of the CuenCANP association rejects this: the arch does not date it. He links it to the passage of people, livestock, carts and tithes towards the city, and its name to Nuño Álvarez de Fuente Encalada, a 16th-century cleric. The chantre was the cathedral chapter dignitary who directed the choir. Neither the construction nor its use to collect tithes is documented here. In the surrounding pine woods, a black pine with five large branches resembling separate trees is known as the Quinto Pino.

Plan your visit

The church and village centre take a short time to see.

Before you travel

Ask the town hall or parish when the church opens.

Combine with

Villalba de la Sierra is 9 km away in a straight line and Cuenca 10 km.