Olvera Castle
You are in the Olvera Castle, built at the end of the 12th century. It was part of the defensive system of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada. Rising on a 623m rock, at the highest point in the town, it has an irregular floor in the shape of an elongated triangle that adapts to the same shape of the rock.
Its access door —the only one in the enclosure— is protected by a barbican and finished off with a shield. The fortress also consists of a Tower of Homage, a stretch of wall with a walkway, two flanking towers, an underground enclosure and two cisterns. The Tower of Homage, which rises in the southern part and has two floors covered by a barrel vault, is rectangular in shape and has rounded corners and is the main element of the castle's defensive mechanism. It is built in masonry, with rows of irregular stones joined with mortar. The original access door is more than five meters above the ground and it is accessed through patín de tambor access from a later period.
Olvera castle —around which the medieval city was formed— has an uncertain origin and part of the fence of the wall that surrounded the neighborhood of La Villa is preserved from it. It must have been built in Muslim times or in previous centuries. The invoice that we know today presents, however, evident Christian features in its construction, the product of successive remodeling that it had to undergo since it was taken by the Castilian troops.
Olvera Castle, declared a Site of Cultural Interest since 1985 as defensive architecture, is located within the boundaries of the Historical Complex. The property is also cataloged by the Municipal Planning Subsidiary Regulations approved in 1999, with a comprehensive level of protection. In 2019 it was included in the Network Castles and Palaces of Spain.
The visit to the castle is complemented by a visit to the Cultural Center 'La Cilla', in which two rooms show the permanent exhibition called La Frontera Medieval y los Castillos.
