Albalate del Arzobispo is located on the left bank of the Martín river, bordering the Cultural Park that vertebrate this river to the northeast. Its toponym is of Arab origin.
Ramón Berenguer IV, in 1149, granted the town and castle to the Seo de Zaragoza. Hence the name of the town “Albalate del Arzobispo”. Although the oldest remains that have come down to us from the original castle and Islamic enclosure include the remains of a tower and a recently consolidated wall, most of them correspond to the time of Archbishop Eximeno Luna, between 1297 and 1314, and with works carried out later between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This castle-archbishop’s palace is one of the most artistic and best preserved in the whole province, considered one of the most representative buildings of Aragonese Gothic. The chapel, a noble area par excellence, shows a spacious room with pointed diaphragm arches over which the ceiling was installed. On the south-facing wall, there is a staircase leading to a beautiful pulpit that opens to the center of the room. Stone benches are embedded in the openings where the windows are located and allow us to imagine the Archbishop and his guests contemplating the beautiful view of the Martín river valley, taking advantage of the last lights of the sunset.
The castle palace sits on the top of a hill overlooking the valley of the Martín river and the town, whose first nucleus grew around it, adapting to the slope of the hill that supports it and adopting a radio-concentric shape, around the castle and as a sign of submission.
The horizontal streets are long and narrow, following the contour lines and to which the facades of the houses and their accesses open, while the transversal streets cut them adopting a steep slope due to the staggering of the buildings adapting to the slope of the hill.
The unique urban characteristics of Albalate -staggered buildings, ancestral homes, attic openings, overhangs, open galleries, alleys, arches and passageways- and its outstanding monuments earned it the declaration of Historic-Artistic Site. Splendid urban viewpoints are the castle from which the urban network of roofs and the Martin valley can be seen. The hermitage of Santo Sepulcro -Albalate belongs to the famous route of the Drum and Bass Drum of the Semana Santa Bajoaragonesa-, and the hermitage of Santa Bárbara. To the west of the castle, the Plaza Mayor is located with the town hall and the church of the Assumption as the most important buildings. The church is a Gothic-Renaissance work built between 1581 and 1589 by order of the Archbishop of Zaragoza Andrés Santos, dates of which are recorded in a running text in Latin that surrounds the church at the start of the starred ribbed vaults with gilded keystones at the intersections. The side chapel of the Virgin of Arcos stands out, topped with a dome and lantern, which is supported by the Roman arch that acts as a passageway in the adjoining side street from which it takes its name. In 1998, the tower was restored and stands out for its characteristics of Mudejar tradition.
To the west of the church square, the main street of the town (Tremedal street) runs through a neighborhood of popular and traditional character crossed by narrow alleys located in the closest to the square and in the old casino the Popular Culture Interpretation Center of the Cultural Park of the Martín River. This axis reaches an arch -with a chapel open to the urban center under the dedication of Santo Domingo-, which was probably an old access portal of the primitive wall that surrounded the town. Outside the walls, the chapel shows a niche in honor of Ntra. Mrs. de Arcosmarking the exit of the town towards the spectacular sanctuary of the Virgin of Arcos, a baroque work of the seventeenth century, which stands on a rocky spur located about 13 kilometers from the town in the direction of Ariño. Sanctuary that is the object of two pilgrimages by both towns in which people from all over the region participate.
To the northeast of the Church square, the main street extends in two sections separated by a sharp bend (Calle Mayor and Avda. de Teruel) to the Aragón square and offers us a more urban section to die through Concepción street in the Juan Rivera square where we locate the convent of Santa Ana, which housed the Franciscan nuns until the disentailment. The church has a single nave. The outbuildings attached to the convent have been modernized.
On the outskirts of the town, in the area of the low threshing floors and with direct access from the road that crosses the industrial park, is located the Nevera or ice well, construction of the seventeenth century, which also gives its name to the area, the icehouse.
Special mention should be made of the hermitage of San José, also on the outskirts of the town and flanking the cemetery. It is an eighteenth-century building of ashlar and brick, which highlights a beautiful dome profusely decorated and the pendentives with images of the four evangelists. The representation in the dome of female angels only, with the representation of the breasts well defined, which makes it even more unique.
