Teruel tourist information - Teruel exist - Aragon, Spain

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ARAGON Information: TERUEL Information

Teruel is home to the most original and beautiful examples of Mudejar architecture, Spain's only truly original building style. The main examples are the cathedral of Santa Maria de Mediavilla, and the churches of San Pedro, San Martin and el Salvador, with their respective towers built between the thirteenth and sixteenth century. In 1986, UNESCO declared it a World Heritage site.
In consideration for the neighbouring monuments, the step of the Paseo del Ovalo were built in a neo-Mudejar style. The original building for the Cathedral was that of a Romanesque church built on the site of a mosque, in keeping with medieval Aragonese building tradition.
The cathedral underwent major interior renovations, including a change in the number of naves. In 1257, work began to build the tower; and at the beginning of the fourteenth century on the coffering, integrating Arab decorative themes (ribbon patterns, geometrical motifs and plant elements) with Christian themes in accordance with the Gothic canons. Figurative paintings belonging to what is known as the linear Gothic style decorate the carpentry"work. In the sixteenth century, the church acquired to the rank of cathedral, and the beautiful lantern dome dates from this period. The high altarpiece, free of polychrome, is the work of Gabriel Joly, and the exquisite beauty of its scenes and figures makes it "one of the most beautiful of the Aragonese Renaissance!'.
The most striking elements of Mudejar art in Teruel are no doubt the city's towers. Four of them, in the Cathedral, San Pedro, San Martin and El Salvador, date from the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth centuries, and the Merced tower is from a later date. The towers show the wealth of geometrical patterns incorporated in their decoration, with the only materials used being brick and the emerald green of the tiling. The solid nature of the construction also contrasts with the apparent fragility of the decorative use of brick and glazed earthenware. The technical feat of raising such a considerable mass over an empty space, where the people of Teruel and visitors alike have walked across for so many centuries, is an exclusive feature of the towers of Teruel, as the base is not built on firm ground, but rather on the vault placed over the road. They have the structure of an Arab minaret. Most of the decorative elements are derived from Almohad architecture and the Palacio de la Aljaferia.
The San Pedro church, which has one of the oldest Mudejar cloisters in Aragón, is home to the thirteenth-century tomb of the Teruel lovers, Isabel and Diego, who died heartbroken from their irremediable separation, and whose mummified bodies lie in the alabaster sepulchre, by Juan de Avalos.