Castilla-La Mancha Palaeontology Museum

The Castilla-La Mancha Palaeontology Museum, the MUPA, is at Calle Río Gritos 5, in the new part of Cuenca, in a modern building on top of a hill with views over much of the city. It is the visit children enjoy most, and the best plan for a rainy day: almost everything is under cover and you go round at your own pace.

What you see

The tourist office presents it as a journey through the last 550 million years of Earth's history. The exhibition runs in chronological order, from the Palaeozoic to the Quaternary hominids, with a separate space for the dinosaurs. The heart of the collection is the fossils from two sites in the province: Las Hoyas, from the Lower Cretaceous, and Lo Hueco, from the Upper Cretaceous. Alongside them are pieces from other parts of the region, such as Palaeozoic fossils from Toledo and Ciudad Real and Mesozoic ones from Guadalajara.

From Las Hoyas comes the most famous piece, the Concavenator, the "hunchbacked hunter of Cuenca", along with primitive birds, fish, insects and plants preserved in great detail. From Lo Hueco come the remains of large titanosaurs, such as Lohuecotitan, as well as crocodiles and turtles. Outside, in the grounds, life-size reproductions await: a Concavenator, a Lohuecotitan, a herd of iguanodons and a crocodile, among others. It is the part the little ones remember.

Hours and tickets

It is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10:00 to 14:00 and from 16:00 to 19:00, and Sundays from 10:00 to 14:00. It is closed every Monday and some special days: 24, 25 and 31 December, 1 and 6 January, and the afternoons of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

General admission costs €5. The combined ticket with the Castilla-La Mancha Science Museum, €7, is valid for 24 hours; watch out, because the two museums are not close to each other. On Wednesdays admission is free all day, as it is on 18 and 31 May. Also free, with documentation, are under-18s (under-16s with an adult), over-65s, students aged 18 to 26, large families, pensioners and people with disabilities, among others. You can buy online or at the ticket office, and pay by card.

At weekends there are guided tours, at €4 for over-12s, and workshops for children aged 3 to 12, at €5 per workshop. It is worth checking the programme on its website, because it changes every month. Allow an hour and a half for the full visit.

Getting there

The museum gives clear instructions: if you use satellite navigation, it will take you to the start of Calle Río Gritos and you will have to keep going up until you see the museum fence. Avoid being taken through the Los Tiradores district, with its narrow streets, which ends at a pedestrian-only gate. By car, enter through the car park area.

To round off the day, go up to the old town to see the cathedral and the Hanging Houses, or leave the afternoon for the Ciudad Encantada, another landscape that also speaks of the millions of years of the Serranía.