Teruel has a legend, and the legend has a tomb, and the tomb stands next to the church marked here. The tower of San Pedro was built in the Mudéjar style, the art of Muslim craftsmen working for Christian patrons, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Brick, glazed ceramic and geometric patterns that look like woven cloth cover its surface. Together with the other towers of Teruel and a handful of buildings across Aragon, it is part of the Mudéjar Architecture group that UNESCO inscribed in 1986 and extended later.
The legend is that of the Lovers of Teruel, a young man and a woman who loved each other against the wishes of her family and died of grief. Their mummified bodies lie in a mausoleum beside the church, and the story has been retold in poems, plays and music for centuries. Whatever the truth, it has made the city a minor place of pilgrimage for romantics, and the mausoleum, with its alabaster sculpture of the two figures reaching toward each other, is worth the small admission.
Teruel is a handsome city, with arcaded streets, ceramic towers and a lovely main square, the Plaza del Torico, named for the small bull on its column. It also has a strong sense of humour about its position: the province is one of the least populated in Spain, and local people long ago adopted the slogan Teruel existe, Teruel exists, to remind the rest of the country they were there. Teruel's cured ham has a protected name, and so does its cold winter weather, since this is one of the coldest cities in Spain.
For riders it is a base rather than a destination. The old town is compact, with narrow one-way streets, so park outside and walk in. From the city, roads fan out to the Sierra de Albarracín to the west, the Maestrazgo to the east and the Javalambre mountain to the south, all with quiet, rewarding riding. Summer is dry and hot by day, and winter can bring snow and ice.
With thirty-five thousand people, Teruel has all the fuel, food and rooms you could want.