Plasencia

Plasencia was founded to be defended. Alfonso VIII of Castile planted it on the Jerte in 1186 with a motto that has stuck — that it should please God and men — and gave it walls that still run for most of their circuit. The cathedral is really two: a Romanesque-Gothic building begun in the thirteenth century and a Renaissance replacement started in the fifteenth and never finished, joined where the money ran out. Below the town the Jerte valley fills with cherry blossom for a fortnight each spring, and Plasencia empties into it.