4-star Hotel / Parador

Enter one of Spain's most beautiful squares in the small town of Garrovillas and you might think you were walking back into the fifteenth century - sturdy granite pillars and the walls of the whitewashed houses, the oldest going back to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, tilt this way and that. You might even think you had had a glass too many, but the town was designed this way for the natural slope of the land.
The square is where it is at here, particularly atmospheric on Wednesday market day when stalls fill the plaza and country folk come in to sell their wares. It also becomes the town's bullring when the fiestas are on in mid August.

• Visit the town and its monuments and places of interest.
• Walking in the local area - very well signposted footpaths.
• Visit the great historical cities and towns of Cáceres (thirty five minutes), Merida (one hour and twenty minutes) and Trujillo (one hour and twenty minutes).
• Visit Alcántara (40 minutes) with its magnificent and imposing half-mile long second century Roman bridge over the Rio Tajo.
• Visit Coria ( 50 minutes) with its perfectly conserved walls, a fifteenth century castle, a Gothic cathedral and a Roman bridge.
• Visit Arroyo de La Luz (30 minutes) where in the Asunción church there are beautifully restored altar paintings by C16th Extremeño mystic painter Luis de Morales "The Divine", one of the least known of the Spanish masters. You might also want to pick up some locally made pottery there.
• Take a trip to the park of Monfrague ( one hour and fifteen minutes) which is one of Spain's finest nature reserves, with 218 vertebrate species which breed there.
• Go to nearby Casar de Caceres to buy a "Torta de Casar" - a locally made, but nationally recognised semi -soft sheep's milk cheese, similar to Camembert.
• Sail or fish at the Embalse de Alcántara.
• Enjoy the local gastronomy - game a speciality. Try one of the all time great dishes of French haute cuisine - Pheasant Alcántara style - stuffed with foie and cooked in a sauce of truffles and port wine. The original recipe comes from the Alcántara monastery.