The Magical Corner of Spain Tourists Haven't Found Yet

It’s a slow February day in Trujillo, Spain. At the center of the town’s Plaza Mayor, a handful of visitors gaze up at the statue of Francisco Pizarro, who was born and raised here before violently subduing the Inca empire in the early 16th century. From this little-known corner of western Spain, Pizarro, Francisco de Orellana and other conquistadores left for the New World, returning with gold and silver to erect the stone-built palaces and churches that still stand haughtily around the square.

“You think you’ve done a place, and then there’s this area that’s kind of unfamiliar,” says Anna Marie Tettamanti, a retired attorney from Buffalo, New York, who’s traveled Spain from coast to coast and is on vacation with her husband, Marcelo. She hadn’t suspected such riches could be squirreled away in landlocked Extremadura. “I look up, and it’s all so beautiful — the details, the history,” she says, referring to the autonomous Spanish community that doubles as my adopted homeland.