Hanging Houses of Cuenca

About this place

These houses with projecting wooden balconies cling to the edge of the Huécar gorge. Buildings of this kind are documented here from the 15th century, though their precise origins are uncertain. View them from across the ravine to understand how Cuenca adapted housing to its terrain. Only a small number of these characteristic houses remain, although similar buildings once lined more of the old city's eastern edge. The surviving structures have also been restored. Their value lies in preserving a distinctive relationship between domestic architecture and landscape, rather than in presenting an entirely unchanged medieval scene.