Address:
Plaza de la Asunción – For further information: in the Tourist Office, Plaza Mayor (Main Square) unnumbered- 30510 Yecla (Murcia) Spain
Phone:
968 75 41 04
Website:
museoarqueologicodeyecla.org
E-mail:
turismo@yecla.es
Useful information:
Visiting hours on Saturdays: 18:00 – 20:00 on Sundays: 11:00 -13:00
Tourist Office Opening hours: from Tuesday to Friday: from 8:00 to 15:00. Saturdays from 10:30 to 14:00 and from 17:00 to 19:30. Holidays: from 10:30 to 14:00
You can find:
Popularly known as “Iglesia Vieja” (Old Church), dates from the 16th century. Its construction began in 1512 and was completed forty years later. It has a rectangular ground plan and it is 40 metres long by 14,5 wide. It has a single nave in Gothic style with ribbed vault and side chapels between the buttresses.
The Gothic design of the nave is divided into five sections and the sixth one is typical of the Renaissance period of polygonal shape, on whose upper part there used to be the altarpiece, lost during the half of the 17th century. The choir and the choir loft are from the same period.
The entrances are found on one side of the apse which displays “escurialense” influence (referring to El Escorial monastery north of Madrid). One of them gives access to the fore vestry and the vestry and the other one to the belfry tower. On the north façade, there is a blazing front framed in archivolts ornamented in its tympanum by its incumbent. Besides, during the Neoclassicism another front, nowadays bricked off, is incorporated.
The ravages of the Civil War left is interior in an appalling state and all the sculptures and paintings disappeared. Over the last few years some restoration works have been made, consolidating its structure permanently.
The design of the temple is a particular model similar to other temples of towns in the surroundings of the same time. The tower of Renaissance style built in the middle 16th century stands out. It has a frieze with sculpted heads combining harmony and slenderness. It has a rectangular base which measures 8.10 m long and 35 m high, divided into four floors. On the top one, we can see mullion windows, bells and a large frieze with a curious series of sculpted heads with different motifs. On the north side, seven knights who represent nobility of the 16th century can be seen. On the west side, there are statues of clergymen. On the east side we can find the faces of two women, soldiers, etc. On the south side you can make out the faces of two young men with an anguished look, two skulls…etc. On the four edges there are four heads sculpted, of which there are of men (representing youth, maturity and old age) and the other of a lion.
The tower of Renaissance style is crowned by an octagonal dome as a kind of spire. Under the balustrade of the tower there are four friezes with twenty-eight sculptures in high relief on which sixteen human heads are represented.
Each frieze represents the different social classes of the time: the nobility, the clergy, the army and the working class. On its vertices three human heads are sculpted, representing the different ages of man: youth, maturity, old age; and a fourth one representing a lion head. The lion head symbolises prudence and temperance as virtues to be exercised during the passage through the different stages of life.