Aranda de Duero historic center
— a town that keeps its wine underfoot.
Not only on a wall.
Aranda de Duero historic center, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“A town on the Duero in Burgos province, in the middle of the Ribera del Duero wine country. The old center hides about seven kilometers of underground galleries dug from the twelfth century forward, where wine still ages under the houses. Above ground, Santa María la Real holds an Isabelline Gothic façade carved by Simón de Colonia around 1500. The Plaza Mayor stays warm with arcades on three sides.
The place, in three passes.
Aranda de Duero sits on the Duero River in the south of Burgos province, Castile and León, at the heart of the Ribera del Duero protected designation of origin. The municipality has roughly 32,000 residents and lies about 80 kilometers south of Burgos and 160 kilometers north of Madrid by the A-1 motorway. The historic center spreads from the Plaza Mayor down to the river, with the parish church of Santa María la Real as its tallest point. The Camino del Cid pilgrim route passes through on its way south.
The west façade of Santa María la Real is the town's defining work, carved in Isabelline Gothic style around 1500 under Simón de Colonia, son of the architect of Burgos Cathedral. Two tympanums frame the door, set with figural sculpture in a deep recessed arch. Inside, the church holds late Gothic ribbed vaulting and a reredos in the apse. Across the historic center, the Iglesia de San Juan Bautista, now a museum of sacred art, preserves an earlier tower and a Renaissance interior, and frames the small medieval square in front of it.
The historic center is walkable in an afternoon. The bodegas subterráneas, the underground wine cellars, can be visited by guided tour booked through the municipal tourist office on Plaza Mayor; routes vary by season and several private bodegas open select cellars during the Fiestas de la Virgen de las Viñas each September. Ribera del Duero wineries cluster on the roads east and west of town along the river. The A-1 motorway gives a one-hour drive from Burgos and roughly two hours from Madrid Barajas.
