Castle of Zafra (Guadalajara)

Where it sits. The Castle of Zafra grows out of a fin of red sandstone in the Sierra de Caldereros, in the far north-eastern corner of Guadalajara province, at about 1,400 metres above sea level. The nearest village, Campillo de Dueñas, lies some five kilometres away across empty upland; the nearest town of any size is Molina de Aragón, half an hour's drive north. There is nothing else in view — no power lines, no farms, no roofs — only juniper scrub, sheep pasture and the rust-coloured rock outcrops that give the range its character. That emptiness is the reason the castle photographs and films so well: it is one of the very few Spanish fortresses with an entirely uncontaminated horizon.

The story behind it. The crag was a natural stronghold long before the present walls, with traces of earlier occupation on the summit, and it was fortified during the period of Muslim rule. What survives is essentially a twelfth- and thirteenth-century Christian castle raised on the frontier of the Señorío de Molina, a semi-independent lordship squeezed between Castile and Aragon whose rulers needed a redoubt that could not be taken quickly. The design follows the rock rather than fighting it: the curtain wall is stitched onto the sandstone wherever the cliff does the work, the entrance is a single narrow gate reached by a rock-cut ramp, and the keep sits on the highest point of the fin. Chronicles record it as a refuge during the thirteenth-century power struggles over Molina, when its garrison held out against a siege — the only kind of place worth holding when the countryside around it offers no cover at all. It fell into ruin after the frontier moved south, and was bought and restored privately in the 1970s, which is why the walls stand to full height today.

On screen. In the sixth season of Game of Thrones, filmed here in October 2015, Zafra became the Tower of Joy — the tower in the Dornish mountains where a dying Lyanna Stark whispers her secret to her brother Ned. It appears first in Oathbreaker, the third episode, in an extended flashback in which the young Ned Stark and his companions fight Ser Arthur Dayne and the Kingsguard on the ground below the walls; the location returns in Blood of My Blood and again in the season finale, The Winds of Winter, when Bran Stark finally sees what happened inside. On screen the tower is slimmer and taller than the real castle, with the keep digitally extended and the surrounding sierra dressed into a Dornish range, but the rock, the ramp and the wall line are Zafra's own. The producers had searched widely for a fortress with no modern intrusions anywhere in the 360-degree view, and this is what they found.

What you actually see today. The castle is private property and is not open for interior visits, so what you get is the approach and the exterior — which, in this case, is the point. A dirt track leaves the CM-2015 near Campillo de Dueñas and runs to a small parking area; from there a rough path climbs to the base of the crag in fifteen or twenty minutes. Walk around the outcrop and the building changes completely from each angle: a compact keep from the south, a long fortified spine from the west, and from the north a wall that seems to grow directly from the cliff. Golden hour turns the sandstone almost scarlet. The wider Sierra de Caldereros is protected landscape and forms part of the Molina–Alto Tajo UNESCO Global Geopark, with marked walking routes among the rock fins and, in spring, a short-lived carpet of upland flowers.

Getting there and timing. There is no public transport of any use; from Madrid it is roughly two and a half hours by car via the A-2 and Molina de Aragón, and from Zaragoza about two. Bring water and food, because the site has nothing — no ticket office, no toilets, no shade, no signal in places. The high plateau is one of the coldest inhabited areas of Spain, with winter nights well below freezing and snow lying into March; late spring and early autumn are the reliable windows. Respect the fences and signage: the owners tolerate visitors on the approach, and that goodwill is what keeps the track open. Molina de Aragón, with one of the largest castle enclosures in Spain, and the gorges of the Alto Tajo natural park are both within half an hour, which makes a full day out of what is otherwise a twenty-minute stop.