Keep exploring

Here’s a short pause in your visit to introduce a few other points of interest that couldn’t be included in the itinerary. Around Úbeda, several destinations are well worth your time. The first, very close by, is Baeza, Úbeda’s Renaissance sister. Just ten minutes away, this bright city offers an elegant cathedral, a sixteenth-century university and a network of peaceful streets that seem unchanged for five hundred years. If you head north, the landscape quickly shifts toward wilderness as you enter the Sierra de Cazorla, Segura y Las Villas Natural Park, the largest protected area in Spain: mountains covered with pines, clear rivers, waterfalls and, every now and then along a trail, a deer or an ibex. Returning toward the Guadalquivir valley, the village of Iznatoraf appears perched on its rock. Its perfectly preserved medieval centre invites slow wandering, and from its ramparts you can see for miles over the rolling olive groves. Just minutes from Úbeda, Sabiote welcomes you with its Renaissance castle designed by Vandelvira. Carefully restored, it illustrates the power of sixteenth-century nobles and offers beautiful views over the surrounding countryside. A little further away, the Iberian archaeological site of Puente Tablas takes you 2,500 years back in time. Here you can explore the remains of a fortified city and, above all, the Solstice Gate, the mysterious passage where sunlight once marked Iberian rituals. To understand local culture, nothing beats a stop at the Olive Culture Museum in Baeza. Installed in a former hacienda, it explains traditional and modern production methods and offers tastings of some of Jaén’s finest oils. These oils come from the olive groves of La Loma, which surround Úbeda like a green sea. Several mills open their doors to visitors, revealing the harvest, the pressing process and the full aromatic complexity of Andalusia’s liquid gold. Continuing eastwards, Hornos de Segura rises above a large turquoise reservoir. This white village, crowned by a medieval castle, offers one of the most impressive panoramas in the Sierra de Segura. Farther north, in the Sierra Morena, stands the Sanctuary of the Virgen de la Cabeza on a natural promontory. A major pilgrimage site, the powerful silence and sweeping views will take your breath away. And for landscape lovers, the viewpoint route of the Sierra Mágina leads through a chain of white mountain villages, with belvederes opening onto miles of olive groves and limestone ridges—a more secret, yet unforgettable Andalusia. With all this, you have plenty of reasons to stay a little longer in the region.