The population extends in a gorge next to the left margin of the Fardes river. It was known also as Villanueva of Don Diego, surely because the place in which is based was property of Don Diego Torres in the XVII century.
The main tourist attraction of this town is the Spa of Alicún de las Torres, located in the property where the Gor and Fardes rivers join, between 700 and 800 meters of altitude, and whose mining-medicinal waters were declared of Public Utility by Decree of the 31st of March of 1870.
The archaeological sites of this town are also a tourist attraction, among which those of Haza of the Toril, of the Neolithic period and the Bronze Age, and those of the Baños de Alicún, of the Low Palaeolithic and Mesolithic period, where eight dolmens, rests of silex, ends of arrow, knives, ceramic glasses and human rests have been found.
The archaeological sites that have been found in this area are witnesses that Villanueva de las Torres has been a human settlement since Prehistoric times. Of the cultures settled down later in the area, the Muslim one is the one that more traces has left, being even in writing references of the baths that later would be the spa. It suffered the harassment of the Christian knights that camped in Cazorla during the Nasrid time, and later it entered in a time of decadence due to the arrival of the Catholic Kings and to the later expulsion of the Moorish. It exists as town for relatively just a short period of time. It is a town with big perspectives mainly touristy due to the spa and to the houses-caves that are an attraction for the rural tourism.
The gastronomy of Villanueva de las Torres has the luck that in the area almond trees, fruit trees and olive trees are cultivated. This variety allows that dishes like the papas a lo pobre, ajoblanco, the fritada of rabbit, the pipirrana, the stew of chick-peas and beans, gachas and migas, among others, can be tasted.
© Patronato Provincial de Turismo de Granada I Diputación de Granada
