Guadamur
Castle and hermitage
Suintila Crown of the Interpretation Centre
Information about Guadamur:
Telephone: 925 291 560
Web: http://www.guadamur.net/
Info: C/ Nueva, 17
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Email: turismo@guadamur.es
This municipality has been populated since ancient times, as archaeological remains testify, but it was during the Visigothic period that it became important, as can be seen from the excavations carried out at the archaeological site of Guarrazar. It continued to be populated in later centuries until the Christian reconquest, when a defensive tower was built, which was demolished in the 15th century for the construction of the present castle by the Counts of Fuensalida. Around the castle, the town grew and its urban centre took shape, forging its historical heritage, such as the 13th century hermitage of the Nativity and the subsequent 16th century parish church. Guadamur offers visitors a journey through the history of this town, its customs and its surroundings through the Ethnographic Museum and the Guarrazar Treasure Interpretation Centre, extending the cultural offer of this town.
Flat lands in the surroundings of the town centre that become undulating in the rest of the municipality with mountains, valleys and streams that give shelter to a flora where we can find examples of the Mediterranean forest of holm oaks, pastures and cultivated fields. To walk through its landscapes is to walk through farmland dominated by cornicabra olive trees and new plantations of picudo, dotted with livestock farms. Territory crossed by paths and hiking trails that delight nature and ecotourism enthusiasts, allowing them to enjoy a natural environment of contrasts.
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Located in the centre of the village, in the Recesvinto square, it has a basilica floor plan. In the first phase of construction in the 16th century, only the central nave was built, with a belfry, a baptismal apse at the foot, the presbytery with its dome and the sacristy. The primitive layout of the pointed arch of the triumphal arch, which serves as access between the nave and the presbytery, could lead us to think that the work is older, although this may be due to the lack of skill of the builders. To this nave, on the right side, immediately after the triumphal arch, a small rectangular chapel was attached, which housed the Santísimo Cristo de la Piedad (Holy Christ of Piety) until 1905. The second phase of construction, consisting of the extension of the left aisle, dates from 1702, according to the terracotta plaque above the door that was opened in this aisle. The procedure followed was the complete construction of the nave, attached to the existing nave and the opening of the four arches in the wall of the central nave. A triangular room was built at the head of the church, which was used as an ossuary or a cemetery cave in the nearby cemetery. At the beginning of the 20th century, in view of the need for a more spacious church, the enlargement and remodelling of the existing one was considered. The work consists of the extension with the right aisle. The remodelling and general refurbishment of the temple; as well as the delimitation of the atrium with a wall, surrounding what was the old parish cemetery, moved to the hermitage a century before. The nave was built with a high masonry plinth, brick piers and walls, and adobe or rammed-earth walls. Once it was built, the arches were opened to connect it with the central nave. The space at the head of the new nave was closed off to serve as an extension to the sacristy. The baptismal font was placed at the foot of the church. At the end of the 1970s, the church enjoyed its last remodelling, which left it with its current appearance.
Located on the hill of the hermitage, it was built by D. Pedro López de Ayala in the middle of the 15th century in a first phase in which the moat, the barbican, the first body of the palace and the keep were built, all with a distinctly fortress-like character. Fifty years after the beginning of construction, the palace was extended and a second building was created. Queen Juana and Felipe I, Cisneros, Carlos V, among others, visited and lived in the castle. From the end of the 16th century and for more than a hundred years it served as a secret prison for the Inquisition. It suffered a slow decline from the mid-18th century until 1890, when it was restored in Gothic style by the Count of Asalto, who lived there with his family.
The hermitage of Nuestra Señora de la Natividad is the oldest building in the town, located on the hill of the same name, possibly the first important building built after the Reconquest. A Mudejar-style building, possibly dating from the second half of the 13th century, which may have had some connection with the defensive tower next to it, a tower that was demolished when construction of the castle began around 1468. In those years, the Christian repopulators built the hermitage as the first church, later remaining as a hermitage when the current church was built. Testimony to the fact that it was a church are the tombs that were found when the water reservoir was built, which bear witness to burials around the building, as was the custom in those centuries. These human remains have nothing to do with those of the 19th century cemetery, which we will talk about in due course and which was attached to the protruding side of the hermitage.
Remains of the old granite justice roll, made in the Gothic style of the 16th century. The top of the upper part, which is located between the wall that delimits the atrium of the church, is missing.
Founded in 1979 by the Montes de Toledo Cultural Association, it is located in the old hermitage of San Antón (16th century). This permanent exhibition of tools and material manifestations of the popular heritage of the thirty villages of the region, brings together domestic, religious, festive, school, craft, construction, economic and other materials that help to understand how the rural communities of the region lived.
Located in a former school where we can see the importance of the Visigothic period in Spain and more specifically everything concerning the archaeological site Guarrazar, where in 1858 the famous treasure was found. It has a variety of archaeological material, models and explanations of the latest excavations, which highlight the importance of the site during the last centuries of Visigothic rule. Undoubtedly the star of the centre is the splendid reproduction of a large part of the Guarrazar Treasure, including two royal crowns, that of Recesvinto and that of Suintila, the latter being a difficult reproduction to see as the original was stolen from the Royal Armoury in 1921. An audiovisual room with interesting documentaries, gives us a very clear understanding of those centuries that were so crucial to the formation of Spain.
Guarrazar is known for having discovered, in 1858, one of the most important treasures ever found in Europe. It consisted of objects of Eucharistic consecration, together with a processional cross and 23 votive wreaths, all made of gold and precious stones. The fact that two of these crowns had been offered to a church by the kings Suintila and Recesvinto left no doubt that all this treasure was formed throughout the Visigothic kingdom of Toledo, possibly between the end of the 6th and the beginning of the 8th century. After its discovery, an investigation was carried out by the historian José Amador de los Ríos, who discovered the remains of a burial chapel in which a presbyter had been buried at the end of the 7th century. Despite the fact that Guarrazar is only ten kilometres southwest of Toledo and the fame it gained in the years following the discovery of the treasure, no further archaeological research was carried out at the site until 2002. This project, funded for four years by the German Archaeological Institute in Madrid, was carried out with a new archaeological methodology that included non-invasive subsoil analysis using geomagnetism and georadar techniques. Their results were key to understanding the archaeological potential of this site, as they showed images of the ground plan of large buildings. In 2013, the current project was initiated under the sponsorship of the Guadamur town council, in whose municipality Guarrazar is located. The excavations that have been carried out in recent years are uncovering a large number of structures from the Visigothic period, including granite ashlar foundations and large marble bases that must have belonged to a monumental building. In addition to the remains of the basilica, the remains of a supposed monastery are also being discovered a few metres to the northeast of the basilica, and the foundations of a large rectangular building, located in a valley about 150 m south of the basilica, from the interior of which an inexhaustible spring flows. The large dimensions of these buildings, together with the richness of the building materials, are leading archaeologists who are excavating it to interpret it as an important Visigothic sanctuary to whose basilica the objects of the famous treasure discovered in the 19th century would have belonged.