Type of site:
Rock-Shelter
Place of location: Castillo de Monfragüe
Village/Town: Torrejón el Rubio
Municipality: Torrejón el Rubio (Cáceres)
Region: Extremadura
State: Spain
Telephone: 927 45 52 92 - 927 19 95 79 - 685 572 015
Website: https://turismotorrejonelrubio.com/en/poi/monfrague-castle-cave-paintings-shelter/
E-mail: arterupestre@torrejonelrubio.es
Natural Environment:
Monfragüe National Park, at the heart of which lies the Abrigo del Castillo, is one of the most important nature reserves in Extremadura and one of the finest in Europe. It covers an area of almost 18,000 hectares in the north-east of the province of Cáceres, between the towns of Plasencia and Trujillo, and is organised as a complex succession of mountains enclosing their inner valleys, notably those formed by the confluence of the Tagus and Tiétar rivers. The area became a National Park in 2006. The Mediterranean forest is very well preserved, with a wide variety of wildlife, including some endangered species (golden eagle, black vulture, black stork, Iberian lynx). The quartzite mountains (Sierra de las Corchuelas, Peña Falcón, Sierra de Santa Catalina, Sierra de Mohedas, etc.) frame the courses of the Tagus and Tiétar rivers, which run through the centre of the park.
Archaeological evidences in the site:
Monfragüe is home to one of the most representative and significant collections of rock art on the Iberian Peninsula. This is evidenced by the 107 rock-art shelters that have so far been catalogued within both the National Park and the Biosphere Reserve. Sixteen of these are located within our municipal area, including the best-known and the only one open to visitors: El Abrigo del Castillo. The Abrigo del Castillo in Monfragüe boasts a wide range of prehistoric rock art, comprising paintings dating from the Epipalaeolithic period (around 9,000 years ago) to the Iron Age (around 2,500 years ago). Most of the existing paintings belong to the Schematic style, which emerged during the Neolithic period.