Restoration of the apse and ante-sacristy of the Monastery of Santa María la Real de Valdeiglesias
The convent of Santa María la Real de Valdeiglesias, founded as a Benedictine center in 1150, became part of the Cistercian order in 1177, and from this moment on the construction of the monastery began.
Restoration of the apse and ante-sacristy of the Monastery of Santa María la Real de Valdeiglesias
Only the apse and the nave of the church are preserved from the first Romanesque phase. During the 16th and 17th centuries, important reforms were carried out that have left their mark on the whole. With the confiscation came abandonment, plunder and ruin. From 2002, restoration work is carried out to stop this process and restore stability to the structures.
Only the apse and the nave of the church are preserved from the first Romanesque phase. During the 16th and 17th centuries, important reforms were carried out that have left their mark on the whole. With the confiscation came abandonment, plunder and ruin. From 2002, restoration work is carried out to stop this process and restore stability to the structures.
The monastery of Santa María la Real de Valdeiglesias is an interesting architectural complex that, in spite of having undergone numerous works of expansion and transformation over time, responds to a large extent to the classical scheme of organization of the Cistercian convents. However, the lack of alignment in the alignment of the church with respect to the dependencies of the monastery, which, in the opinion of some authors, would be caused by the preexistence of the old hermitage of the Holy Cross, currently converted into the ochavada chapel of the panda north of the cloister.
The monastery was founded in 1150 under the Rule of San Benito and the protection of Alfonso VII in the area of “El Valle de las Iglesias”, an area in which a significant number of hermitages have been concentrated since Visigothic times. Shortly after, in 1177, Alfonso VIII brought monks from the Cistercian monastery of Santa Espina de Valladolid to populate this convent, which the Benedictines must have abandoned. Although it is possible that the foundation of the time of Alfonso VII did not come to pass. From that moment, the monastery ceases to belong to the Benedictine order, to become part of the Cistercian. During the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, life in the valley revolved around the monastery and its community, who owned all the surrounding land.
As for its architecture, from this first moment the nave of the church and the Romanesque apse are preserved. In the sixteenth century important modifications were made. On the initiative of the abbot Fray Jerónimo Hurtado de Toledo, the stonework vaults of the church and the ambulatory of the cloister were built, as well as the upper gallery of this. From the seventeenth century they are the main facade of the church and part of the bodies of bedrooms and the east wing. In 1835, with the disentailment, the monastery passed into private hands, being abandoned and plundered.
This important architectural complex has suffered from neglect and looting, and is currently in an advanced state of ruin. For this reason, since the year 2002, interventions have been carried out to try to stop the process of deterioration. To this end, a series of previous studies of a historical-archaeological nature have been carried out, in addition to geotechnical studies, all of them focused on the writing of an integral restoration and consolidation project.
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Up to now, emergency works have been carried out on felling and debris removal and restoration work has begun in different parts of the complex. Intervened in the vaults of the ambulatory corner, in the arcades and in the north wall of the cloister, as well as in the wall of the transept and in the north transept.
Restoration works have been carried out in the apse and the ante-sacristy. The main problem that affected this set was the structural instability, therefore, the priority has been to restore stability and security to the architectural structures. The area of intervention has been unearthed, consolidated and the walls and collapsed areas of the vaults restored, the roof of the three apses of the church recovered and the vaults of the sacristy and the armariolum.
Currently, the General Directorate has drafted the project of the next phase, the restoration of the nave of the church, whose works will be tendered in 2018.
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