With all it has to offer Madrid In the capital itself, you have to remember from time to time that it is also worth taking the car or a train to get to know the fantastic towns that dot all its surroundings. There are already more than well-known getaways, such as Chinchón or La Hiruela, but today we head to a small town less than an hour that surprises by all that it has to offer to the visitor.
His name is Olive Fresnedillas, town and municipality located in the western mountains of the Community of Madrid, welcomed by beautiful views of the Sierra de Guadarrama and the capital itself. It is a perfect place to escape from urban life and also visit the surroundings, as it is located in a place of great beauty and natural importance, protected by environmental laws for the wild bird protectionwhich, if we are lucky, we can spot, such as the black stork, the golden eagles or the black vulture.
In addition to routes suitable for the whole family through its surroundings, the town of Fresnedillas de la Oliva itself has a lot of charm to walk unhurriedly through its stone streets, where the houses and buildings welcome us with a very special surprisethe so-called ‘Route of the living houses’.
It is an original initiative promoted by the City Council to give a new life to the town and protect and revalue abandoned houses and other buildings that were falling into disuse. The Madrid artist Elena Parlange has decorated many of them with paintings of everyday scenesendearing characters and moments of the traditional life of the town and its history, recovering craft trades and anecdotes with which anyone who has lived in a town will feel identified.
But this town hides another unexpected place for those who approach it for the first time: the Lunar Museum. This scientific dissemination center, intended for all types of public and very focused on attracting families and children, was built because Fresnedillas de la Oliva was headquarters of the Apollo Station of Madrid of NASA until the year 1987. This base received the famous phrase pronounced by the astronaut Neil Armstrong when he first set foot on the moon, back in 1969.
Thus, as a reminder of that historic event and of all the work that was carried out in the already closed space base, the museum offers an interesting visit both to specialized audiences and to those who wish to enter the space world for the first time, with guided tours, activities, workshops and content adapted to each group of visitors. Of course, they only open weekends and holidays, a fact to take into account.
In addition, it is worth going to visit the St. Bartholomew’s Churchthe town’s parish church dating from the 16th century, and quietly walk the most popular natural route in the area, called ‘of the bridge‘, just three kilometers long, named after the meadow of the same name through which it runs, with the Moraleja stream that the residents used to wash, refresh or irrigate in the past.
Guadarrama. Passion for the Mountain. 25 excursions for everyone (HIKING GUIDES)
Photos | Fresnedillas de la Oliva Tourism – Lunar Museum
In DAP | Madrid opens a museum in the Royal Palace with some of the most important works in the history of Spain: write down when it opens
In DAP | This town in Zaragoza is the only excommunicated town in Spain, but it has a church and a museum of witchcraft that are worth visiting