La Pueblanueva

Church of the Encarnación

Las Vegas Mausoleum
Information from La Pueblanueva:
Telephone: 925 860 002
Web: https://www.aytopueblanueva.com/nuestro-pueblo/turismo/lugares-de-inter%C3%A9s/
Info:
Email: info@lapueblanueva.com
A town located in the Tagus valley that arose at the end of the 15th century as a union of several existing settlements in its territory. However, these lands have been inhabited since Roman times, as evidenced by the existence of several archaeological sites from that period, the most important being the one located in the hamlet of Las Vegas de San Antonio, belonging to this municipality, where an extraordinary Hispano-Roman sarcophagus from the 2nd-3rd centuries AD was found, near the Roman sites located in the El Álamo and Santa María farms and in the Cerro de Santa María, associated with this necropolis.
The waters of the Tagus River, which irrigate this municipality forming a large meander, have created a very peculiar landscape due to the large ravines excavated by the river and the streams that break the quaternary terraces. Land of exceptional ecological value with a characteristic flora and fauna, with an abundance of riverside groves of white poplar and tamarisk trees, together with kermes oak and olive groves that complete the unique beauty of these lands. Hiking trails cross this territory through the Barrancas del Infierno and the Sangrera river basin.
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What to see?
Building built in brick and masonry with quartzite stones, its tower and a Gothic-Mudejar doorway on the north wall are outstanding.
A building of popular architecture built in the 18th century and dedicated to the patron saint of the municipality. It has a single nave and a choir with a balustrade at the base. On the front of the headboard there is an altar in a semicircular niche.
The Mausoleum of Las Vegas is located in the hamlet of Las Vegas de San Antonio, belonging to the municipality of La Pueblanueva. Located on the left bank of the Tagus River, close to the farmlands of El Álamo and Santa María and the Cerro de Santa María, where the important Roman habitat sites associated with this necropolis are located. We have news of its appearance since 1871 in a report by the scholar Jiménez de la Llave to the Royal Academy of History, and the underground crypt was documented and excavated in the mid-1960s by members of the German Archaeological Institute in Madrid.
The Mausoleum represents a large late Roman monumental building in the form of a pantheon for collective parental burial, typologically fitting into the series of large central sepulchral buildings, exceptional for the western part of the empire (with an eastern and Lazio influence), It continued as a building during the Visigothic period and even during the Islamic and Christian period under the Middle Ages, associated with a site in the form of a necropolis due to the existence on the outside of other residential structures built after the construction and a series of inhumations in both tombs and pits of children and adults.
The immovable structure is an octagonal building of which the foundations of two concentric lines, the entrance recesses, openings and supports, as well as a crypt in the form of an octagon segment in the central half, still remain. The masonry of the building is made of opus caementicium, while the crypt is built with carved granite ashlars, and its vault was made of bricks with stucco plaster inside, and the floors were completed with opus signinum, and the remains of fragments of marble that lined the building.
In addition to fine ceramics (terras sigillatas claras) and common ceramics, both late Roman, Visigothic and medieval (Islamic and Christian), there are at least three sarcophagi, of which at least the historical one made of marble and known as the "Sarcophagus of the Apostles" (dating from the time of the Emperor Theodosius) is on display in the National Archaeological Museum, while the other two made of granite have disappeared.
The Bravo for Recycling sculpture park has 150 sculptures made entirely from recycled materials among 147 olive trees that are 500 years old. It is a permanent exhibition of contemporary installations and sculptures made entirely by the sculptor Ricardo Muñoz Bravo.
The main characteristic of the park is not only the integration of art with nature, but also the uniqueness of its artistic and sculptural proposal, which differs from the rest in that none of them offers the kind of sculpture that focuses entirely on recycling and reusing materials.