Murcia: from the baroque cathedral to the old bridge: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
A baroque cathedral, the Real Casino and the old squares
Murcia is a city of layers: a Muslim citadel and palaces, a mosque that became the cathedral, baroque façades, and the silk, grain and flower trade of its squares, with the sculptor Francisco Salzillo and the statesman Floridablanca turning up along the way.
The stops
The cathedral's new baroque façade, built between 1737 and 1754, was so monumental that the bishopric and the city council promoted an urban reform, and the square opened in 1759 beside the Bishop's Palace, which went up between 1748 and 1768. It was first called the Plaza del Palacio and has carried the name of Cardinal Luis Belluga, bishop of Cartagena and viceroy of Murcia and Valencia, since 1884. In 1998 Rafael Moneo's annex to the town hall rose on the square, bringing municipal authority to a place that had traditionally stood for the Church.
Photo: Tango7174 — CC BY-SA 4.0 The qasaba, the palace and military complex of the Emirate of Murcia, stood on this ground, and some of its excavated remains are shown on the museum's underground level. After the Treaty of Alcaraz in 1243 the future Alfonso X took possession of it, and part of the site later became a hospital, first under the Templars and then the Order of Calatrava, which stayed the city's most important hospital until the middle of the 20th century. The present church, an elliptical Rococo design by Martín Solera built between 1764 and 1781, now holds a museum of religious sculpture.
Photo: Morini33 — CC BY-SA 3.0 es The cathedral rose on the site of the city's Great Mosque, which James I of Aragon took in the Mudéjar revolt of 1264 to 1266 and dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The Gothic church was begun in the 14th century and finished in the 15th, but it kept changing for centuries, and in the 18th the architect Jaume Bort gave it the baroque façade that is considered a masterpiece of Spanish baroque. The bell tower took from 1521 to the 1790s to build, and the main chapel holds an urn with the heart and entrails of Alfonso X the Wise, who had wished his entrails to go to Murcia.
Photo: Fernando — CC BY-SA 4.0 The Casino began in 1847 as a society of the city's bourgeoisie, settled in this building in 1853, and gained its façade on Calle Trapería in 1902. Behind it the Arab Patio is covered in neo-Nasrid decoration that took more than 20,000 sheets of gold leaf, with an Arabic inscription that translates as "Nothing greater than Allah" running round it. The ballroom of 1875 has ceilings with portraits of famous Murcians, among them the statesman Floridablanca, the sculptor Francisco Salzillo and the actor Julián Romea, under five gilded bronze chandeliers dressed with 1,800 pieces of Baccarat crystal.
Photo: amaianos from Galicia — CC BY 2.0 For centuries this was the market square: documents of 1272 show Alfonso X setting a Thursday market and an annual fair here, and in 1411 Saint Vincent Ferrer preached in it. The church of Santo Domingo, built between 1722 and 1745, turns its head to the square rather than its front, designed as a grand stage set for this important space. The big fig tree in the middle was planted in 1893.
Photo: chisloup — CC BY 3.0 This monastery stands on a Muslim recreational palace: the 12th-century Dar as-Sugra was enlarged by Ibn Mardanis, the Wolf King, and between 1228 and 1238 Ibn Hud turned it into the smaller Al-Qasr al-Sagir. In 1365 Peter I of Castile gave his royal rooms there to the Poor Clares, who have owned them ever since. The remains of the Arab palace that survive inside are counted among the most important examples of Islamic art in Murcia, and the museum also holds sculptures by Francisco Salzillo.
Photo: Morini33 — CC BY-SA 3.0 es The theatre was built on land taken from the Dominican convent and inaugurated by Queen Isabella II on 25 October 1862 with the Murcian actor Julián Romea performing. It was first called the Teatro de los Infantes and has carried Romea's name since 1872; after fires in 1877 and 1899 it was rebuilt, so the outside dates from 1880 and the interior from 1899 to 1901. In 1933 the student company La Barraca, directed by Federico García Lorca, performed here, and a portrait of Romea is among those on the Real Casino's ballroom ceiling.
Photo: Diego Delso — CC BY-SA 4.0 This parish appears in the land distributions of Alfonso X in the 13th century, and the count of Floridablanca, the statesman José Moñino, was baptised here in 1728, in the parish's earlier church. The present church was begun in 1767, and its central nave and eclectic façade were added between 1879 and 1883. Inside is Francisco Salzillo's Virgen de las Angustias of 1740, made for the Servite brotherhood and perhaps his first masterpiece.
Photo: Morini33 — CC BY-SA 3.0 es For centuries this was the true main square of Murcia, where the council met and where proclamations and public trials took place. The tower of the Santa Catalina church was the tallest in the city until the 16th century and served as a lookout, even against pirates from the Barbary coast. Between 1601 and 1608 the Contraste de la Seda was built here, the silk exchange, which also oversaw the exchange of gold and silver coin, and it was pulled down in 1932; the Ramón Gaya Museum, devoted to the Murcian painter, stands on the square today.
Photo: Zarateman — CC0 The square takes its name from the flower sellers who set up their stalls around the Carnicería Mayor, the city's main butcher's building, put up in the 17th century and pulled down at the end of the 19th. It was then the Plaza de las Carnicerías, and in the early 20th century the council renamed it for the Murcian scholar and writer Pedro Díaz Cassou, but people kept saying Flores and in 1968 that became its official name. Corpus Christi and Holy Week processions have passed through it since time out of mind, and some flower shops are still here.
Photo: Zarateman — CC0 The sculptor Francisco Salzillo's parents, Nicolás Salzillo and Isabel Alcaraz, were married in this church in 1699, and two of Francisco's carvings are inside: the Cristo de la Esperanza of 1755, the brotherhood's titular image, and the San Pedro Arrepentido of 1780, the church's own patron image. The church's origins go back to the conquest of Murcia by James I of Aragon in 1266, and the present building was begun in the early 17th century, with its main portal finished in 1612. Its dome is covered in coloured glazed tiles and topped by a weathervane shaped like a rooster, the bird linked to Saint Peter's denials.
Photo: Gregorico — CC0 Built as the city's grain store, this building was finished in 1628 after lightning set fire to the first Almudí on 12 August 1612, igniting the gunpowder kept there while work on the silk exchange and armoury was under way. On the façade a relief of 1575 from that first building shows a woman standing for Murcia nursing a child who is not her own, a symbol of the hospitality of Murcians. Inside, a stretch of Murcia's Arab wall bears the building's weight, because the Almudí was built on top of the old defence.
Photo: Gregorico — CC BY-SA 3.0 A flood on 26 September 1701 destroyed the 16th-century bridge that linked the city centre to the start of the royal road to Cartagena. The first stone of its replacement was laid in 1718, but work stopped when Philip V asked the city for 14,000 doubloons for his palace at La Granja, and the bridge was not completed until 1742. Its popular name comes from the statue of Our Lady of Hazards in a niche on the south side, and it was the first permanent bridge in Murcia to withstand the Segura's periodic floods, including the great flood of Santa Teresa in 1879.
Photo: H.Helmlechner — CC BY-SA 4.0
Hear the full story as you walk, or create your own walk, in the Alleytale app.