Campillo de Ranas: a village of black slate in the Sierra of Guadalajara

In the north-western mountains of Guadalajara, where a great vein of dark Ordovician slate breaks the surface, the village of Campillo de Ranas seems carved from a single piece of stone. Walls, roofs and chimneys are all built of the same black slate, giving the place the deep, uniform colour that has made it one of the showpieces of the region known as the Black Villages.

The black architecture

Wandering the cobbled lanes, you see the local building tradition in every house: ground floors once used for living, lofts above for hay, and outbuildings for animals, all roofed with overlapping slabs of slate. The little church of Santa Maria Magdalena follows the same style, and from the slate-built Fountain of the Frogs a viewpoint opens towards the pointed summit of the Ocejon, often capped with snow in winter.

Ocejon and the hamlets

The municipality, set at around 1,100 metres within the Sierra Norte de Guadalajara Natural Park, takes in several equally picturesque hamlets, among them Campillejo, Roblelacasa, Robleluengo and the half-drowned village of El Vado. With Majaelrayo and Valverde de los Arroyos it forms the heart of the Black Villages walking route, and in recent years Campillo has become a favourite place for weddings.

Getting there

Campillo de Ranas is about sixty-three kilometres north of Guadalajara and roughly 120 from Madrid, reached by mountain roads beyond Tamajon.