Explore Religious Heritage Across Europe

Collegiate Saint-Pierre is located in Tonquédec, in Brittany. The oldest parts of the building date back to the fifteenth century, and the bell tower was added in the eighteenth century. The church was erected as a collegiate church in the 15th century by Jean de Ploeuc, bishop of Tréguier. The collegiate church was later restored several times, notably in the 19th century. Inside, there is a remarkable fifteenth century canopy, composed of 16 stained glass windows.

The old collegiate church of Zenarruza dates from the 10th century. Legend has it that on the day of the Assumption, in 968, an eagle took a skull from an open tomb and carried it away until it dropped it on the place where the church of Cenarruza is nowadays. At the end of the 14th century, the increase in the importance of the Compostela Way on which the church stands led to the constitution of a collegiate council in what was until then a parish. Thus Cenarruza was erected as a collegiate church in 1379. The collegiate church existed until it was reduced by the Concordat of 1851. After decades of dilapidation, in the 1980s the church was restored. Currently, it is a priory of the Cistercian Order of Close Observance.

The Convent of Las Descalzas Reales was founded in 1559 by Joanna of Austria, sister of King Philip II of Spain. The present monastery is located partly on the site of one of the first palaces built in Madrid. The building, in the classical style of the 16th century, was designed by the architects Antonio Sillero and Juan Bautista de Toledo, and houses important works of art. Part of the monastery is currently dedicated to a museum that can be visited.

Built in the 17th century, the Convent of Carmo is a former monastery in the municipality of Horta. Its community of nuns declined after several earthquakes affected the building, and it was eventually taken over by the Portuguese army to be used as a garrison.

The Convent of San Marcos is one of the most important monuments of the Spanish Renaissance. Although founded in the twelfth century, the building was rebuilt in the sixteenth century by Renaissance architects such as Juan de Orozco, Martín de Villarreal and Juan de Badajoz el Mozo. In 1615 the staircase was built and in 1679 the part of the cloister that was still missing was completed. Finally, between 1711 and 1715 a large extension to the building was carried out.

The convent of Santa Cruz la Real was the first Dominican monastery in the country to be founded during the lifetime of Dominic de Guzmán (1170-1221), founder of the Dominican Order. Built in Romanesque style, it was remodelled during the time of the Catholic Monarchs (Queen Isabel I of Castile and King Ferdinand II), who gave the convent a relic of the Lignum Crucis. The convent was decommissioned in the 19th century, and its facilities now form the EI university campus in the city.

The Convent of São Pedro de Alcântara was built in the 17th century and houses religious paintings, tiled panels and gilded woodwork.

The Convent of St. Joseph, also known as the Convent of the Adorers, is a women's convent built in 1917 on the ruins of a hermitage dedicated to St. Joseph, dating from the 13th century. At the beginning of the 19th century, during the Peninsular War (1807-1814), the building was bombed and was practically abandoned until it was rebuilt in 1917.

The convent of Agustinas and the church of La Purísima form a complex of cloistered convent declared national monument in 1935. The foundation of the convent dates from the 17th century.

San Francisco del Valle de Dios is a Franciscan monastery founded in the early 13th century. The original monastery collapsed in the early 18th century, leaving only the five-pointed arches of the main cloister and the tomb of Cotolai. The reconstruction, which required a change in the orientation of the monastery church, began in 1742, according to the plans of Simón Rodríguez. This led to the construction of the church's façade, designed (in Baroque style) by Fray Manuel Caeiro.