Almagro, the Golden Age theatre town: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
The Golden Age theatre town
Almagro was the capital of the Order of Calatrava and a base for the Fugger bankers, and many of its convents, palaces and hospitals now serve as stages, galleries and a national theatre museum for its classical theatre festival.
The stops
The name Almagro comes from the Arabic for the local red clay, one of the materials used in this square. In the 16th century the Fugger family, bankers to Charles V who held the Almadén mercury mines in return for their loans, redeveloped the square, and the two-storey glazed galleries on its two long sides come from their influence. Those galleries were first open to the public, who watched the shows held in the square, and were painted turquoise green when Charles IV was proclaimed king in 1788.
Photo: Carlos Delgado — CC BY-SA 3.0 The Figueroa family ordered this Baroque church of the Augustinian convent of the Santísimo Sacramento built in 1625, but work only began in the early 18th century and ended in 1719. Its front, with giant-order columns, was conceived as a great altarpiece, and tempera paintings cover the walls, vaults and dome with scenes about the Holy Sacrament, Saint Augustine and the Virgin. After the 19th-century confiscations only the church was left, and it is no longer used for worship: the National Museum of Performing Arts uses it as an exhibition space, including during the festival.
Photo: Zarateman — CC0 The church of this Dominican convent was probably finished in 1597, and an Annunciation by Vicente Carducho stands out at its high altar. The plain front carries an 18th-century shield held by rampant lions under a marquis's crown, with the arms of the counts of Valdeparaíso and the marquises of Añavate. On the corner with Calle Dominicas, a small chapel holds the Cristo de la Salud, a 17th-century carving.
Photo: Zarateman — CC0 This is the largest church in the province, bigger even than the cathedral of Ciudad Real, and it stands on the former Hospital de Nuestra Señora de La Mayor, on lots the town bought in 1546. It is late Gothic with Renaissance touches, and its front has big buttresses and a brick rose window dated 1602. The unfinished tower on the right of the front is the 17th-century work of Benito de Soto, an architect who lived in Almagro.
Photo: Vanbasten 23 — CC BY-SA 3.0 Building began around 1519 as a hospital that then became a convent, founded by the commander Gutierre de Padilla for nuns of the Order of Calatrava. It is one of three convents that stood outside Almagro's old walls. Its rectangular cloister has two galleries, Ionic below and Tuscan above, with 60 marble columns and the Padilla arms carved in the spandrels, and it has also served as a stage during the theatre festival.
Photo: JnCrlsMG — CC BY-SA 4.0 The Fugger family put up this 16th-century building to manage and store the mercury from the Almadén mines and the grain from the rents of the Maestrazgos. Its square Renaissance patio has two galleries of brick arches held up by limestone columns, and the entrance hall and staircase carry plasterwork of egg-and-dart and sea waves. The town council bought it around 1984 and restored it, and it now houses the Universidad Popular and is one of the stages of the theatre festival.
Photo: Festival Internacional de Teatro Clásico de Almagro — CC BY-SA 2.0 Work on this neoclassical theatre began in 1861 to a design by the architect Cirilo Vara y Soria, and it opened in 1865. Its auditorium is elliptical for acoustic reasons, with stalls, boxes and the upper gallery known as the gallinero, and it now holds about 530 people. The front is painted red and white, and the paintings on the ceiling are modern replacements for ones lost in Miguel Fisac's restoration of the late 1980s.
Photo: GFreihalter — CC BY-SA 3.0 This 17th-century hospital and convent kept the nave of its church and its infirmary. The ward and the church formed one long hall so that patients could follow services from their beds. After the confiscations of the 19th century the complex became wine cellars, and it has since been rebuilt as an open-air stage, where the Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico normally performs.
Photo: Festival Internacional de Teatro Clásico de Almagro — CC BY-SA 2.0 Jakob Fugger rebuilt the old hermitage of the Saviour on this spot, and it kept that name until the 18th century, when it was put under Saint Blaise. A Latin inscription over the doorway records that Jakob Fugger and his brothers' sons dedicated it, and two griffins flank the niche above the door, with the Fugger arms over them. It still holds services, and since 2005 the theatre festival has used it for concerts.
Photo: Zarateman — CC0 Frey Fernando Fernández de Córdova y Mendoza, an official of the Order of Calatrava, pressed for a Dominican monastery here, and Charles I gave the royal licence in 1536; building ended in 1538 and it was occupied in 1539. After his death in 1550 his heirs sought the Pope's licence for a college-university, and classes in theology, arts and philosophy began on 18 October 1574. The university closed and the Dominicans were expelled in 1835, the building later became an oil mill and a furniture factory, and today only the church and a hall of the college stand.
Photo: GFreihalter — CC BY-SA 3.0 Spain's national museum of performing arts occupies what remains of the palaces of the Grand Masters of the Order of Calatrava, with their corner tower and a central courtyard of horseshoe arches. Its collections include more than 8,000 works on paper, among them stage and costume designs, and over 2,000 costumes from the late 18th century on. In the gardens in front stands an equestrian statue of Diego de Almagro, born in the town and adelantado of Chile, by the La Mancha sculptor Joaquín García Donaire.
Photo: Zarateman — CC0 The Corral de Comedias is the best preserved 17th-century corral de comedias, and the only one of its kind kept complete. The priest Leonardo de Oviedo paid 5,000 ducats to build it by enlarging the Toro inn, its first recorded performance dates from 1629, and its courtyard is ringed by 54 straight wooden posts painted red almagre, the clay that gives the town its name. After corrals were banned in the 18th century it kept working as an inn, which helped save it, and the walls hiding it were removed in the 1950s; the Classical Theatre Festival still plays here every July.
Photo: José Luis Filpo Cabana — CC BY-SA 4.0 The Parador occupies the Franciscan convent of Santa Catalina, built outside the town walls from 1603 by Jerónimo de Ávila in memory of his wife Catalina de Sanabria, with friars living there from 1612. Badly damaged in the Spanish Civil War, it was ceded to the state in 1969, rebuilt from 1972 in the original style with local materials, and inaugurated by Queen Sofía in 1979. The 16th-century coffered ceiling of its refectory is said to have been rescued from the old Renaissance university of Almagro, and the bell in the town hall tower came from this convent.
Photo: Paradores — CC BY-SA 4.0
Hear the full story as you walk, or create your own walk, in the Alleytale app.