Palace in Ubeda
Also known as Palacio del Deán Ortega, Parador de Úbeda
FreeCosts nothing to visit.
A 16th-century Renaissance palace on the Plaza Vazquez de Molina in Ubeda, designed by Andres de Vandelvira and now run as the Parador de Ubeda. For budget travelers the appeal is the free architecture: the lobby and arcaded inner courtyard are open to anyone who walks in, so the Renaissance patio can be admired without being a hotel guest.
The palace sits in the heart of Ubeda’s UNESCO old town, sharing the square with the Sacra Capilla del Salvador, the Vela de los Cobos Palace, and the Casa de las Torres. Stepping inside the parador courtyard and walking the surrounding plaza both cost nothing, so this fits naturally onto a free circuit of the old town, easily paired with nearby Baeza. Come in spring or autumn, since the Jaen summer gets brutally hot.
Practical
Nearby
Other places worth the walk, and what each one costs.
Gothic and Renaissance collegiate church raised over Ubeda's former main mosque, anchoring one end of the Plaza Vazquez de Molina alongside the Sacra Capilla del Salvador and the Palace of Dean Ortega. The interior and cloister charge a small entry fee, but the square outside and the church facade cost nothing to admire.
A Plateresque palace in Ubeda with a grand double-towered facade, one of the most ornate civil frontages in the town's Renaissance old town. The building now houses the local School of Art, and the facade is free to admire from the street. The interior courtyard is often accessible during school hours at no charge.
The Church of San Lorenzo is one of Ubeda's most unusual monuments: a 13th-century church-fortress built straight onto the Almohad city wall, so its south side doubles as a stretch of the old defences and its wall walkway, the adarve, opens out as a balcony over the Guadalquivir valley and the olive groves below.
The Church of San Pablo is one of the oldest churches in Ubeda, with origins reaching back to the Visigothic period and a long history of rebuilding that left it layered in Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance work.
Freestanding Renaissance clock tower on Plaza de Andalucia in Ubeda, marking the boundary between the old and new town. Free to see and a handy orientation point: from here the monumental Renaissance quarter around Plaza Vazquez de Molina is a short walk south, so it costs nothing to use the tower as the spot where a budget walking route through the old
One of the surviving medieval gates in Ubeda's old walls, opening toward the south and the road to Granada. Free to walk up to at any hour, it marks where the city once faced the Reconquista frontier. A quick, no-cost stop on the way to or from the Renaissance core around Plaza Vazquez de Molina.
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The whole of Ubeda