Destination List > Hanging Houses of Cuenca

Hanging Houses of Cuenca

Photo by Tyrol Jones

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The history...

The Hanging Houses of Cuenca are located around 85 miles east of Madrid, Spain. Also known as the Casas Colgadas, these houses literally hang off the cliffs above the River Huecar. The houses are known as “rascacielos” which means skyscrapers, and at one point they were very common along the cliffs. Today, not many remain.

The City of Cuenca was originally the capital of the Spanish province of Cuenca, and has been a city in the Iberian Peninsula since 714 AD. Although the area seems fairly uninhabitable, the city sits between the Jucar and Huecar Rivers, providing strategic access to the Iberian Peninsula. Because of this, a fortress city was built which included the Hanging Houses. Although not originally constructed with the city of Cuenca, there is evidence these homes were built as early at the 15th century thanks to some panoramic sketches of the town by artist Anton van de Wyngaerde.

The Hanging Houses were added to the World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1996, but the most well known of the houses became a heritage site of its own in the 1980s when it became a museum dedicated to Spanish Abstract Art.