Through the Shadow route Alfares, visitors can enjoy a reunion with history of ceramics Hellin XVII centuries, XVIII y XIX. Walking through streets as picturesque as the Pottery, Slope of San Rafael or Bernales, situated on a small prominence of the population in this neighborhood stands traditionally potter.
The tour begins at the European Square to usher in the Street Cantarerias, name is due to the existence of a workshop devoted to the sale and manufacture of pitchers. From these pottery kilns, also, out other containers for food and water crocks, jugs or jars.
After the street Cantarerias, the journey takes us to one of the most scenic spots, photographed and drawn in the locality. It is the Cuesta de San Rafael, at the end of which you can see the shrine of the city's patron and which is named this street.
This is a temple built in the seventeenth century modest materials like brick, plaster and wood. It is chaired by a sculpture of the same century hellineros identified as San Rafael, but it has the peculiarity of being a cross between San Miguel, people dressed in military and armed with sword and shield, the San Rafael, with the presence of Tobias with the fish and the Guardian Angel.
The next landmark, after passing through the streets as Virgen, Bernales or Olvido, is the Street Barranco. This is popularly known as the Barranco Del Judío, as it may have been a site chosen to conduct the burial of Jews when they refused to be baptized.
Later we find the Union Street, name that seems to be because it was an old road that united neighborhoods and the Jewish quarter of the Moors settled in the Corn Exchange Street.
Later, the route leaves the San Rafael to get to from San Roque, chaired by the Church of the eighteenth century and popular style. Inside is one of the images that awakens devotion among hellineros: Cristo de Medinaceli. The last steps lead us to the street Pottery. It was concentrated almost all of the pottery activity, being the city with the highest production of ceramics of the ancient Kingdom of Murcia during the seventeenth, Eighteenth and the first third of the nineteenth, although there was evidence of glazed earthenware Hellinera in the sixteenth century. Highlighted the related ceramics with tableware: dishes, circular sources, jars of the wing saleros, inter alia.
Finally the route ends at the Local Museum, where the shadow of the potteries has now reached its point of light, allowing the visitor to derivative works of the ancient pottery traditions.