Moradillo de Roa is situated on the southern edge of the Ribera del Duero, bordering the Páramo de Corcos of the Segovian sub-plateau, on a hill with wide views of an open horizon dominated by fields of cereals and vineyards.

Like all the villages along the Duero border from the 10th century onwards, it was populated in the late 11th century, forming part of the advance frontier line of the Riaza valley, corresponding to the line of watchtowers and defences of Roa, Hoyales, Haza, Adrada de Haza (“Torreón de los Moros”) and Fuentenebro (Torreón de Peñaflor). At the same time, the surrounding areas were dotted with numerous contemporary hermitages that symbolised the definitive establishment of the Christian kingdoms of the so-called Reconquest.

Moradillo sits on a small hill or mound, which is the old Castilian word for mounds; and it is this location that gives this village its unique character, as it is precisely the privileged location of the defensive hill with its high views where the tower stands in association with a late Gothic church that was added later. And the ensemble is completed with the particular use of the “cotarro” itself to build a whole complex of well harmonised wine cellars and wine presses, which you can also visit with a guide. Cotarro is what the locals call it.

We insist on its uniqueness, as there are many examples of ethnographically significant cellar complexes, but few are found clustered around the conical face of a regular cotarro around its entire perimeter and, above all, with the aforementioned church-tower and the cemetery crowning it and forming a complex of substantial beauty.

The long tradition of vine cultivation in the Ribera del Duero abounded in the very dense and varied civil and service architecture of the region with multiple manifestations of constructions; different schools and polymorphic patterns of cellars, wine presses, lagaretas, long cellars with their unloading docks, zarceras (vents), porters, etc., which are functionally adapted to the main purpose of the production and preservation of the wines.

Moradillo conserves an admirable homogeneous ensemble with more than one hundred and fifty cellars, most of them with their well-preserved “contadores” (hut or picnic area at the entrance to the cellar), all in carved stone, of uniform measurements and aligned in horizontal and descending streets that occupy all the sides of the aforementioned hill of the Church of San Pedro. There is a good number of wine presses and cellars in the town centre itself, as is usual in all the towns of La Ribera.

Apart from the ethnographic assets that derive from viticulture, the village’s farmhouse has preserved good taste for being built mostly in limestone, combining ashlar and ashlar with masonry and leaving visible remnants of good traditional adobe walls, some wood and stone, and wood and adobe, as well as single-pitched tile roofs as has always been traditional to build roofs in the Duero valley.

The Tower-Church complex dominates the hamlet, which was probably framed by a smaller defensive wall of which insignificant remains remain. The tower has a spiral staircase free spindle of particular merit looking west and dominating with its battlements a complete linear horizon and an exceptional full view of the Serrezuela where the peak of Peñacuerno is located, the highest point of the Ribera del Duero with its 1377 m. The church building is adorned with good elements of vaulting and Gothic capitals, a baptismal font of merit and several Visigothic funerary stelae from an ancient necropolis reused on and in the walls of the church and cemetery. Remains of the primitive Romanesque church of San Juan remain.

It should be added that the Chorrón stream runs nearby, forming an alameda and a small gallery forest that break up the dominant grey-brown colour of the fields. The Hermitage in honour of the Virgin of the same name, which contains rich Mudejar-style polychrome coffered ceilings, is located in the district of Egido, and nearby are the remains of the tasting and palaeontological studies of an Iron Age settlement in the district of “Los Ceniceros”.

The hospitality of the locals, the availability of hotel and catering services and the existence of footpaths included in the short routes along the Ribera del Duero invite you to visit this modest but unmissable and surprising southern corner of the province of Burgos.

Moradillo de Roa celebrates its fiestas in honour of San Isidro Labrador (15 May) and in honour of Nuestra Señora del Egido (September).

Locality of Moradillo de Roa: Moradillanos.