River Martín Cultural Park

Natural elements and human work have allied to create canyons and spectacular ravines, along with interesting prints from history as cave paintings o archaeological remains. River Martin Cultural Park hides twenty prehistoric sites opened to the public, most of them shelters with paintings belonging to the East and schematic cycles. The Centre for interpretation of prehistoric art ‘Antonio Beltrán’ in Ariño allows the tourist to gaze a magnificent exhibition of real scale photographs and copies of almost all the paintings in the Park.

‘Cañada de Marco’, in Alcaine, proposes a travel along human history back to 6,000 thousand years ago. In Obón, its first dwellers’ existence can be checked in the paintings ‘Hocino de Chornas’, ‘El Cerrao’ and ‘La Coquinera’. ‘Hocino de Chornas’ can be reached by a path from Obón.

First inhabitants’ way of life and beliefs are carved in ‘Frontón de la Tía Chula’, in Oliete, in ‘La Higuera del Barranco’, in Estercuel, and in ‘Los Pozos Bolletes’ in Montalbán, being reachable by a path from Peñarroyas. The Centre for Interpretation of prehistoric Art in Ariño is the perfect end to culminate this travel through cave art. In Alacón, you can step back to the Jurassic and check thanks to the sea fossils that, once upon a time, there used to be a tropical sea here, whereas in Ariño the presence of dinosaurs is witnessed by footprints found in the surrounding area.

Oliete offers to the visitors a wide range of attractions, important sites and remains of the Iberian presence mix in its beautiful old town and with the spectacular Saint Peter’s chasm, more than 100 metres deep and round long. A walking on these Iberian prints around Oliete shows the importance of this spot in the past.

The archaeological heritage is completed with the burials founds in Albalate del Arzobispo, Oliete, Obón and the medieval necropolis found opposite to the shrine of Saint Mary of ‘Los Arcos’, which can be reached from the shrine on foot through a path.  There are also testimonies of Visigothic and Muslim settlements in different spots or remains of outstanding castles, such as the one of ‘Torre de Arcas’.