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Cordoba cultural landscapes route illustrated as a wide Guadalquivir vega at golden hour, olive rows and vineyards in the foreground, a castle on a distant rise and reservoir water glinting beyond

Andalusia Maps a New Route Through Eight Córdoba Landscapes

Andalusia's heritage institute has published a GPX and KML route linking eight Córdoba landscapes, from Medina Azahara to Santa Eufemia. Here is each stop.

Portrait of Elena Ruiz Montoya
Written by

Six years specialising in heritage towns and cultural route planning across Córdoba province.

Published
Modern Córdoba1808–today
Diario Córdoba reported on 28 September 2026 that the Andalusian Historical Heritage Institute (IAPH) has added a Córdoba route to its Guía Digital that treats vineyards, a reservoir, mining country and olive plains as heritage in their own right.[1] It has eight stages, from Madinat al-Zahra to the Sierra de Santa Eufemia.[2] Each stop asks the same question of a different place: what did people do to this ground, and what is left of it?
Modern Córdoba1808–today
Landscapes in the register
118
Andalusian register of cultural-interest landscapes behind the route[3]
Iznájar dam works
1959-1969
Works on the Genil reservoir began in 1959 and lasted a decade[4]
Montoro from Córdoba
45 km
Distance to the provincial capital; the town is in the Guadalquivir valley[5]

In this article

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A route that treats the land as the monument

The Guía Digital del Patrimonio Cultural de Andalucía is the IAPH's online atlas of heritage routes. Diario Córdoba puts it at close to 40 routes across the eight Andalusian provinces,[6] and says Córdoba already had eight cultural routes in it before this one.[7] The new route changes the subject from buildings to ground.
The IAPH's stated aim, as the paper reports it, is to show how people have historically related to their physical surroundings.[8] Behind it sits the Registro de Paisajes de Interés Cultural de Andalucía, which currently holds 118 landscapes.[3] A 2020 IAPH press dossier counted 15 documented for Córdoba province,[9] so eight stages is a selection, not a census.
In Diario Córdoba's account the stages run in this order:[2][10]
  • Madinat al-Zahra
  • Almodóvar del Río
  • The Montilla wine landscape
  • The Iznájar water landscape
  • Montoro
  • The Los Pedroches olive landscape
  • The Alto Guadiato mining landscape
  • The recreated landscape of the Sierra de Santa Eufemia
The route can be exported. The cartography downloads as GPX, the format a car satnav or hiking app reads,[11] and as KML, which opens in Google Earth or Google Maps.[12] That is the useful part for a driver. Load the KML into Google Maps before you leave the hotel and measure the legs yourself, because the reporting gives no drive times.

From the caliphal city to the vines

The route opens at the stage every visitor already knows. Madinat al-Zahra began as a newly founded Umayyad city in the mid-10th century, seat of the Caliphate of Córdoba.[13] UNESCO lists it partly as an example of urban planning that combined architecture with landscape,[14] which is why it fits here: the city was planned with its setting in mind. The Medina Azahara page covers the ruins themselves.
Ruins of Medina Azahara with arches and columns of the Salon Rico

Explore nearby · Monument

Medina Azahara

Medina Azahara is Córdoba's UNESCO listed Caliphate City: a 10th century palace 8 km from town, with the Salón Rico and award-winning museum. Plan your visit.

Almodóvar del Río is where the IAPH's way of looking is easiest to follow. Its sheet reads the castle through one trait, strategic position for territorial defence.[15] It was built in the Andalusian period to protect the cora of Córdoba[16] and still stands as a monumental counterpoint to the flat vega of the Guadalquivir.[17] Read this way, it is a lookout over the plain before it is a film set. For the castle's film history, see our piece on Almodóvar del Río castle.
Montilla suits anyone expecting a wine trail and getting a land-use argument instead. The IAPH notes that the landscape still alternates olive groves and vineyards,[18] and that today's vineyard took shape only from the second half of the 18th century.[19] That makes it roughly eight centuries younger than the caliphal city that opens the route. For the wine itself, see why Montilla-Moriles is not sherry.
Three stages in, the pattern is visible. A palace city planned against its setting, a castle sited to control a plain, a vineyard patterned by 18th-century economics. Each entry asks what people did to the ground, not what stands on it.

Water and river: Iznájar and Montoro

Iznájar would surprise anyone who thinks heritage means old. The reservoir on the middle Genil took a decade, with works starting in 1959 and finishing in 1969.[4] The dam was projected for flood defence, supplying numerous towns, irrigation and electricity,[20] which makes this infrastructure within living memory, treated as heritage.
The town sits where the Subbética meets the Sierra de Ronda, beside the reservoir,[21] and the IAPH notes the surrounding hills under dry-farmed olive monoculture.[22] Water and olives explain this corner of the province better than any single monument does.
Milky Way arcing over dehesa farmland at the Los Pedroches Starlight Reserve at night, stargazing near Córdoba under a star-dense Sierra Morena sky

Deep dive · Article

Stargazing Near Córdoba: From Ibn Firnas to Los Pedroches

Córdoba's Caliphate-era astronomers charted the stars centuries ago; today Los Pedroches, under 90 minutes north, offers certified dark skies to see them.

Montoro is 45 km from the provincial capital, in the Guadalquivir valley.[5] The IAPH sheet places the town on a rise near a bend of the river, with the sierra to the north and Córdoba's vega to the south,[23] and notes that a monumental bridge built in 1498 marks the river landscape powerfully.[24] The meander was declared a natural monument of Andalusia in 2011,[25] so this stage joins built and natural protection. The Montoro meander article has the walking detail.

Olives, coal and a castle left to ruin

Los Pedroches is the stage most likely to be misfiled. Here the route means olives: the IAPH register carries a Paisaje oleícola de Los Pedroches for Pozoblanco and Añora.[26] The medieval Arabic name for the plain, Fahs al-Ballut, means "plain of acorns",[27] so the oak-and-acorn image is not wrong for the area, just not this stage.
Alto Guadiato is the industrial stage. The IAPH sheet picks the chimneys of the former mining buildings at Peñarroya-Pueblonuevo as among the landscape's most characteristic elements,[28] and records that activity has shrunk to feeding thermal power plants.[29] The IAPH's 2020 Córdoba dossier also names the coal mining basin of Alto Guadiato,[30] so the new route is revisiting familiar ground.
The route closes in the Sierra de Santa Eufemia, which the report calls a "recreated" landscape.[2] The IAPH sheet puts the northern limit of the dehesa fields there.[31] It also records that the castle on the summit was stripped of its military force and its ruin deliberately brought about,[32] and that visitor interest centres on the rocky promontory carrying what remains.[33] A route about people and territory ends on a fortress people chose to wreck. In the same province, the castle at Belalcázar took a different path: its 47 m keep is listed by the Junta de Andalucía as Spain's tallest.

Planning your own drive from the files

Here the reporting runs out. Nothing sourced says how long the stages take to drive, whether they work as a single day, or where to park at each. The only distance on record is Montoro's 45 km from the provincial capital.[5] Treat the eight stages as a menu, not a timetable, and settle day trip or overnight with the map open beside it.

Check the Guía Digital before you go

The stage list, its order and the GPX and KML files come from the route as reported by Diario Córdoba. Open the IAPH Guía Digital for the current version before planning a day around one stop.
Load the KML into Google Maps, measure the legs, then pick the stages that share a direction out of the city. The IAPH did the same for Jaén: eight of the 116 landscapes then in the register,[34] each with an individual technical sheet.[35] Read the sheet for a stage before you drive to it; the sheets are where most of the detail in this article comes from.

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What the reporting does not say is what each stage is like on the ground: opening hours, access, signage. Until the IAPH's own route page can be checked, the GPX file is the one part of this route you can test yourself.

Frequently asked questions

Where can I download the Córdoba cultural landscapes route as GPX or KML?
Diario Córdoba reports that the IAPH's Guía Digital del Patrimonio Cultural de Andalucía offers the route's cartography as GPX for GPS apps and as KML for Google Earth or Google Maps.[11][12] Search the Guía Digital for the Córdoba cultural landscapes route to find the download links.

Which stage is the olive landscape and which is the dehesa one?
Los Pedroches is the olive stage, matching the IAPH register entry for Pozoblanco and Añora.[26] The Sierra de Santa Eufemia is the recreated landscape at the end of the route, where the IAPH puts the northern limit of the dehesa fields.[2][31]

How far is Montoro from Córdoba?
Montoro is 45 km from the provincial capital, in the Guadalquivir valley.[5] No source checked for this article gives drive times for the other stages.

Sources

35 references Show
  1. diariocordoba.com (opens in a new tab)

    “El Instituto Andaluz del Patrimonio Histórico (IAPH) ha incorporado a su Guía Digital del Patrimonio Cultural de Andalucía una nueva ruta dedicada a los paisajes de interés cultural de la provincia de Córdoba.”

  2. diariocordoba.com (opens in a new tab)

    “La ruta comienza en el paisaje de Madinat al-Zahra y finaliza en el paisaje recreado de la Sierra de Santa Eufemia”

  3. diariocordoba.com (opens in a new tab)

    “Este último reúne actualmente 118 paisajes andaluces”

  4. Wikipedia — Embalse de Iznájar (opens in a new tab)

    “Para la construcción, que comenzó en 1959 y duró una década”

  5. Wikipedia — Montoro, Spain (opens in a new tab)

    “located 45 kilometres (28 mi) from the provincial capital and it is also located in the Guadalquivir valley.”

  6. diariocordoba.com (opens in a new tab)

    “ofrece cerca de 40 rutas distribuidas por las ocho provincias.”

  7. diariocordoba.com (opens in a new tab)

    “En el caso de Córdoba, la Guía Digital cuenta ya con ocho rutas culturales que permiten aproximarse al patrimonio provincial desde diferentes perspectivas.”

  8. diariocordoba.com (opens in a new tab)

    “El objetivo del IAPH es mostrar cómo las personas se han relacionado históricamente con el medio físico”

  9. Junta de Andalucía (opens in a new tab)

    “15 paisajes culturales y 5 rutas culturales.”

  10. diariocordoba.com (opens in a new tab)

    “transcurriendo por Almodóvar del Río, el paisaje vitivinícola de Montilla, el del agua en Iznájar, Montoro, el paisaje oleícola de Los Pedroches y el minero del Alto Guadiato.”

  11. diariocordoba.com (opens in a new tab)

    “los usuarios pueden descargar los materiales asociados a los itinerarios y exportar la cartografía de la ruta en formato GPX, que puede visualizarse en aplicaciones y dispositivos GPS.”

  12. diariocordoba.com (opens in a new tab)

    “También está disponible en formato KML, compatible con herramientas ampliamente utilizadas como Google Earth o Google Maps”

  13. UNESCO World Heritage (opens in a new tab)

    “The Caliphate City of Medina Azahara is an archaeological site of a newly-founded city built in the mid-10th century CE by the western Umayyad dynasty as the seat of the Caliphate of Cordoba.”

  14. UNESCO World Heritage (opens in a new tab)

    “outstanding example of urban planning combining architectural and landscape approaches”

  15. repositorio.iaph.es — Ficha divulgativa paisaje interes cultural almodovar del rio cordoba.pdf (opens in a new tab)

    “El castillo de Almodóvar del Río es uno de los hitos monumentales que con mayor presencia en el paisaje evidencia uno de sus rasgos culturales: el posicionamiento estratégico para la defensa territorial.”

  16. repositorio.iaph.es — Ficha divulgativa paisaje interes cultural almodovar del rio cordoba.pdf (opens in a new tab)

    “Durante el período andalusí, la construcción del gran castillo procuró seguridad en la defensa de la cora de Córdoba”

  17. repositorio.iaph.es — Ficha divulgativa paisaje interes cultural almodovar del rio cordoba.pdf (opens in a new tab)

    “Almodóvar del Río supone un contrapunto con gran aporte monumental en el paisaje de la planicie de la vega del Gudalquivir”

  18. repositorio.iaph.es — Ficha divulgativa paisaje interes cultural vitivinicola montilla cordoba.pdf (opens in a new tab)

    “El paisaje de Montilla-Moriles mantiene en la actualidad la alternancia de explotaciones olivareras y vitivinícolas”

  19. repositorio.iaph.es — Ficha divulgativa paisaje interes cultural vitivinicola montilla cordoba.pdf (opens in a new tab)

    “En Montilla-Moriles, la conformación del viñedo contemporáneo se ha producido desde la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII”

  20. repositorio.iaph.es — Ficha divulgativa paisaje interes cultural agua iznajar cordoba.pdf (opens in a new tab)

    “Proyectado para la defensa de las avenidas del Genil, el abastecimiento de numerosos núcleos de población, la puesta en riego de campos y la producción de electricidad”

  21. repositorio.iaph.es — Ficha divulgativa paisaje interes cultural agua iznajar cordoba.pdf (opens in a new tab)

    “La localidad de Iznájar se encuentra en el límite de la Subbética y la Sierra de Ronda junto a un gran embalse construido en el tramo medio del río Genil.”

  22. repositorio.iaph.es — Ficha divulgativa paisaje interes cultural agua iznajar cordoba.pdf (opens in a new tab)

    “contrastando entre los cerros ocupados por el monocultivo al olivar de secano”

  23. repositorio.iaph.es — Ficha divulgativa paisaje interes cultural montoro cordoba.pdf (opens in a new tab)

    “Montoro se sitúa sobre una loma cercana a un meandro del Guadalquivir, desde donde puede contemplarse la sierra al norte y vega de Córdoba al sur.”

  24. repositorio.iaph.es — Ficha divulgativa paisaje interes cultural montoro cordoba.pdf (opens in a new tab)

    “En 1498 se construyó el puente monumental que marca potentemente el paisaje del río”

  25. Wikipedia — Meandro de Montoro (opens in a new tab)

    “Fue declarado monumento natural de Andalucía en 2011.”

  26. repositorio.iaph.es — 324406 (opens in a new tab)

    “Paisaje oleícola de Los Pedroches (Córdoba)Instituto Andaluz del Patrimonio Histórico (IAPH)2016Pozoblanco; Añora”

  27. Wikipedia — Los Pedroches (opens in a new tab)

    “calls the Pedroches "Fahs al Ballut", which means "plain of acorns".”

  28. repositorio.iaph.es — Ficha divulgativa paisaje interes cultural minero alto guadiato cordoba.pdf (opens in a new tab)

    “Las chimeneas de los antiguos inmuebles mineros en Peñarrolla – Pueblo Nuevo se presentan en el actual paisaje como unos de los elementos más característicos del lugar.”

  29. repositorio.iaph.es — Ficha divulgativa paisaje interes cultural minero alto guadiato cordoba.pdf (opens in a new tab)

    “la actividad ha quedado reducida al abastecimiento de de plantas térmicas de electricidad bajo el apoyo de la iniciativa pública.”

  30. Junta de Andalucía (opens in a new tab)

    “o la cuenca minera del carbón del Alto Guadiato.”

  31. repositorio.iaph.es — Ficha divulgativa paisaje interes cultural santa eufemia cordoba.pdf (opens in a new tab)

    “los campos de dehesa tienen su límite norte en la Sierra de Santa Eufemia.”

  32. repositorio.iaph.es — Ficha divulgativa paisaje interes cultural santa eufemia cordoba.pdf (opens in a new tab)

    “se dejó desprovisto el castillo de fuerza militar ocasionándose intencionadamente su ruina.”

  33. repositorio.iaph.es — Ficha divulgativa paisaje interes cultural santa eufemia cordoba.pdf (opens in a new tab)

    “un turismo que tiene como principal interés la visita del promontorio rocoso sobre el que permanecen los restos del castillo”

  34. repositorio.iaph.es — Boletin guia digital iaph octubre 2021.pdf (opens in a new tab)

    “Esta ruta por los Paisajes de Interés Cultural de la provincia de Jaén ofrece un recorrido por 8 de los 116 paisajes que integran el Registro de Paisajes de Interés Cultural de Andalucía.”

  35. repositorio.iaph.es — Boletin guia digital iaph octubre 2021.pdf (opens in a new tab)

    “Cada uno de ellos cuenta con una ficha técnica individualizada que condensa y analiza la información recabada”