Mercado Medieval de Plasencia
Just 35 km north of Monfragüe, the walled city of Plasencia hosts one of Extremadura's most atmospheric weekly markets every Tuesday in the Plaza Mayor — a tradition documented since 1189 when King Alfonso VIII granted the city its market charter. The Tuesday market is a living institution where farmers, cheesemakers and spice traders set up stalls under the same arcaded square their ancestors use
The Tuesday Market
Arrive before 09:00 to catch the full spread: rounds of local sheep's cheese, braids of dried pimentón peppers, honeys from the dehesa, and fresh seasonal produce from the Jerte valley — cherries in May, paprika peppers in autumn. Stalls also sell handmade leather goods, esparto baskets and ceramic pottery in the Extremaduran tradition.
The market wraps around the Gothic-Renaissance cathedral's apse and spills into the surrounding medieval lanes, so shopping and sightseeing blur naturally into one another. Locals do their weekly grocery shop here; prices are farm-gate honest.
Plasencia's Old Town
While you are in Plasencia, walk the Roman-founded city walls (sections date to the 12th century), duck into the Catedral Nueva whose unfinished nave has a raw, almost brutalist grandeur, and find the Museo Etnográfico Textil on Calle Coria, which documents the region's wool and silk weaving traditions in a beautifully converted 16th-century convent.
The Barrio de la Mota, the old Jewish quarter below the walls, is a tangle of steep lanes with carved stone doorways and window boxes of geraniums — one of the most photogenic urban corners in all of Extremadura.
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