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Ciudades reinventadas

“We would invite you to go out into the pure spring air to explore, together, these spaces and these successive times –Architecture and History- symbolized by stones that are World Heritage.” José Hierro

Alcalá de Henares symbolizes like no other the city that emerges in the midst of Language, Literature and Heritage. A language that, moreover, turns each day into many languages. The city’s language is plural, exotic, tolerant, enriched by each and every one of the identities defining the fusion of our cities.

A wise city like its University, it suggests beauty at every step. A Renaissance city, an intellectual city, dedicated to God and to the men that thought and wrote within it.

Miguel de Cervantes, author of the universal Quixote, was born in Alcalá de Henares in 1547 and spent his first years there. The house where he was born, a magnificent example of a 16th-century Castilian home, now houses a museum with a wonderful collection of Cervantine publications.

Alcalá features important archaeological sites that speak to us of Roman Complutum, an excellent medieval urban structure that enabled the coexistence of three cultures and three religions and, above all, the perfect City of Knowledge and City of God that, designed by the artful Cardinal Cisneros, now enables us to enjoy a unique ensemble of magnificent constructions from the Renaissance and the baroque periods, among which its grand University stands out. These exceptional riches have propelled Alcalá de Henares into the 21st century, making it a tourist and cultural landmark.

The city has always entwined its spirit, which is writing, knowledge, culture, and its body, the place that hosted those that chose the way of thinking. Walking around Alcalá de Henares means to follow the route and life of the city and the writer, following steps and traces marked in streets, walls and paper. All mixed together and all arranged to offer a majestic spectacle, renewed today and open to a future that is only comparable to those years of the 16th century, when everything that took place here had a legendary ring to it.

Tourist information:
           
Collaborators:
                           
          RTVE   Ciudades Mexicanas Patrimonio Mundial   Ciudades Mexicanas Patrimonio Mundial
© Grupo Ciudades Patrimonio de la Humanidad de España, 2024