OFFICIAL TOUR TRUJILLO Historical Legendary and Monumental

Our official guided tour begins in Trujillo’s amazing Plaza Mayor, full of artisan-merchant portals and huge Renaissance palaces, with typical lodges and corner balconies, some still belonging to the direct descendants of the noble lineages that inhabited them between the 15th and 16th centuries. Dukes or Marquises such as Slate, Vargas, Carvajal, Orellana, Chaves, etc., Guarded by the Church of San Martin de Tours, the "Council Houses", the "Royal Weight House" or the "Chain House", flanked by defensive towers and presided over by the famous equestrian statue of the Conqueror Francisco Pizarro.

Presiding over the Plaza Mayor of Trujillo is the emblematic equestrian statue of Francisco Pizarro, native of this city and conqueror of the Inca Empire. It is forged in solid bronze and weighs about 6,500 kg, It was a gift to the city from its author, the American sculptor Charls Rumsey, in 1927 and opened two years later,

Marquis de la Conquista Palace, a title granted by Emperor Charles V to Francisco Pizarro. Plateresque in style, he was ordered to build by him in his will and it was his heiress daughter, the Inca princess Francisco Pizarro Yupanqui, along with her uncle and husband, Hernando Pizarro, who fulfilled this wish. On the spectacular corner balcony, the immense shield of the Marquisate, carved in granite, which represents inside relevant aspects of the Conquest of the Inca Empire. On both sides of the balcony, the busts of Francisco Pizarro, his wife, daughter and brother Hernando stand out. A repeated series of the blazon of the surname Pizarro, adorns the facade, represented by two bears, reaching the pine cones, on slate floor.

Las Casas del Concejo or former Town Hall, located in the Plaza Mayor of Trujillo, was a multipurpose building composed of the Consistory, the Archive of Scribes, the Chapel of Good Government and the Royal Prison, which was accessed by a vaulted passageway called the "jail canyon" It was ordered to be built at the end of the 15th century by Isabella the Catholic and renovated in the time of Charles I. Because of this, the nobility that held political power, began to build its palaces around it, configuring the Plaza Mayor. Currently, this building houses the Courthouses.

Also called the Palace of the Marquises of Piedras Albas, it has an original lodge of three scarzan arches of Florentine influence, since the wife of the owner and co-director of the city, was related to the Piccolomini family and Pope Pius II. The building finishes with a Gothic cresting of great beauty, carved in granite.

Palace of the Dukes of San Carlos, Renaissance style and four heights, having in the third a stylized portico gallery, constituted by three arches of half point and Ionic columns. In the cornered angle stands out a cornered balcony framed with two bicephalous eagles, imperial symbol, privilege granted by Emperor Charles V, as well as the title of Dukes of San Carlos. The set is topped by seven unique tower-shaped chimneys and a spiral staircase with pinnacle. It was built in the 16th century by the first "Major Mail of the Indians", Don Lorenzo Galíndez de Carvajal, whose private monopoly was inherited by the family, until in the 18th century this institution passed to the crown as a public service. Today it still belongs to the direct descendants, now Dukes of San Carlos.

The Church of San Martín de Tours, already existed in the 14th century as a small hermitage and in the 16th century was expanded in high height, maintaining a single nave, by the Trujillan architect Sancho de Cabrera, in which other important local stonemasons such as Alonso and his Son Francisco Becerra, architects of corner balconies, convents, churches and cathedrals also collaborated. Its unique side door is from the 15th century, in a trilobed Elizabethan Gothic arch, while its main door is Renaissance. It contains a 17th-century Baroque altarpiece, an 18th-century Baroque organ, a large 13th-century Romanesque wood carving of Our Lady of the Crown and a striking Gothic wood image of the painful 14th-century "Christ of the Waters".

It was built in the 16th century by Juan Pizarro de Orellana, cousin of the Conqueror, who also participated with him in the American gestation. When he returned, he built this palace on an old military house with defensive towers, opening a beautiful loggia, a Renaissance balcony and a typical cover characteristic of the architects Becerra. Inside, it contains a spectacular Plateresque cloistered courtyard. This palace was converted into a contracting house, hooked with the one in Seville, where those who left to board for America could arrange their papers directly. D. Miguel de Cervantes was also staying here for a while when, when he was released from his prison in Algiers, he came to give his shackles to the virgin of Guadalupe.

It is a strong house for military use, with defensive towers, built on the Arab wall, next to one of the seven entrance doors to the medieval village, flanked by the military tower of this house and by the bell tower of the church of Santiago, from which the curfew was given at evening. He hosted the Catholic Monarchs on several occasions, during the year 1477, to pacify the civil strife between the nobles, and in the year 1479, during the War of the succession against the Beltraneja. When John II of Aragon died while Isabel and Fernando were staying here, they held funerals in the Church of Santa María elder de Trujillo, summoning the Council that recognized Frenando as the new King of Aragon and Sicily, signing a document recognizing the union of this crown with that of Castile and the new monarchs as Kings of Spain, what they call the "So much Monta". Here also signed the peace of the War against the Beltraneja and Portugal

It is a Muslim Alcazaba, built between the 9th and 10th centuries, for purely military and defensive use, not residential, so it does not have rooms, but two walled outdoor spaces. The first, square in shape, as a yard of arms, and the second, polygonal in shape, is the Albacar, for animal protection. In the first there is a 10th century cistern and a hermitage that hosts the city's Patron Saint, the Virgin of Victory. Here the wealth of the Crown was kept in the time of Peter I "the cruel", because it was one of the safest fortresses in the kingdom. And it also served as a refuge for the Beltraneja until she had to hand it over to Isabella the Catholic and flee to Plasencia, where she was able to marry her uncle, the King of Portugal, because in Trujillo, where the wedding was initially arranged, they did not succeed.

It was the most important religious building in the city, where the main lineages and the most illustrious Conquerors who forged their medieval past are buried. Among others, the tomb of Captain Diego García de Paredes stands out, which he celebrated in “Quixote” Miguel de Cervantes as the “Extremeño Samson” for his physical strength, and which was the subject of several legends. It was built in the 13th century, after the reconquest, in Romanesque late style. From that time it preserves its apse and its Romanesque tower, which fell with the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and was rebuilt in the 20th century by a Trujillan stonemason, who finished it by placing a shield of the Athletic Club of Bilbao. In the 16th century the temple was enlarged and inside it the artistic Plateresque choir and its main altarpiece, by the Salmantine Gothic painter Fernando Gallego, stand out. The church witnessed the funeral of King John II of Aragon, and several years later, the funeral of his son Ferdinand the Catholic.

This cistern belonged to the annexed Fort-House of Fernán Ruiz de Altamirano, who was probably a former Muslim Alcázar. It is of Arabic tracery, with three naves on master walls and arches supported by pilasters, covered with three half-barreled vaults. The materials used in its construction are granite ashlars, masonry and sandstone. It measures 10 m deep, 13 meters long and 12 meters wide. It is a large quadrangular space in whose faces it still preserves remains of oil that the Arabs used in paint to seal and protect the surfaces and keep drinking water. It was boarded up for several centuries, probably from some time of war, for the enemy did not use it or poison it, until it was rediscovered by chance in the 20th century.