Xàtiva, home town of the Borgias: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
The Borgia home town and the castle on the hill
Xàtiva presents itself as the cradle of the Borgia family: two popes, Callixtus III and Alexander VI, left their mark on its churches, its streets and its museum.
The stops
Xàtiva has two weekly markets, a Tuesday one and a Friday one, and the market is popularly known simply as la plaça, the square. King James I set them up in a privilege of 17 August 1250: a market for Christians, held on Tuesdays, and a market for the Moors, held on Fridays. Both now take place in this square of arcaded houses, and the Tuesday market is still seen as the main one.
Photo: Joanbanjo — CC BY-SA 4.0 Locals call this church La Seu, the cathedral, although Xàtiva never got the bishop it hoped for. Building began in the late 16th century on the site of the old mosque, has run on for more than four centuries, and the church is still unfinished. Bronze statues of the two Borgia popes, Callixtus III and Alexander VI, stand at the main door, and the museum inside keeps a gold chalice that Callixtus III gave to the church.
Photo: Xic667 — CC0 Rodrigo de Borja, the future Pope Alexander VI, was baptised in this church. A restoration between 1988 and 1995 stripped away many 18th-century additions to show the original Gothic character, including the original painted wooden ceiling, with figures and heraldic shields, on the north side, and it uncovered 26 crypts under the floor. One of its altarpieces was commissioned by Guerau de Castellvert, a relative of Alexander VI.
Photo: Mdeazpeitia — CC BY 4.0 According to tradition, number 5 of the old Aldomar square, now the Plaça d'Alexandre VI, is where Rodrigo de Borja was born, the man who became Pope Alexander VI. The town's tourism site says the family was already living here in 1378, that the square was called the Plaça dels Borja in medieval times, and that a plaque recalls the birth. The doorway with its wide voussoirs is all that remains of the original house.
Photo: Joanbanjo — CC BY-SA 3.0 Of the old Trinitarian convent, founded in the 13th century, only the church doorway survives. It is Flamboyant Gothic in style and was once gilded and painted, and the old convent now houses the Municipal Historical Archive. The Font de la Trinitat, which presides over the square, is one of the few Gothic fountains still standing in Spain, its octagonal basin alternating the arms of the city and of the Kingdom of Valencia.
Photo: Joanbanjo — CC BY-SA 3.0 James I founded this as a royal hospital, and for more than five centuries it looked after the health of the people of Xàtiva. The building blends the last of Gothic architecture with the first Renaissance experiments: a Gothic chapel doorway with an ogee arch, flamboyant pinnacles and angel musicians around a Virgin and Child, a central door conceived as a triumphal arch with Doric pilasters, and a gallery of small round arches that the town's tourism site likens to those of Florentine palaces. The 1707 fire hit the interior hard, and the rebuilt rooms were lined with tiles from the Royal Factory of Valencia.
Photo: Rafa Esteve — CC BY-SA 4.0 The Almodí was the town's wheat exchange, built in the middle of the 16th century, and it has a Gothic facade and a Renaissance courtyard with Ionic columns. Next door stood the royal weigh-house, later a customs house and then the Bank of Spain, and both buildings now hold the town's archaeology museum. Its star piece is an 11th-century Islamic basin of pink marble from the Buixcarró hills, used as a trough for animals until the late 18th century.
Photo: Joanbanjo — CC BY-SA 3.0 Archbishop Mayoral founded the school that stood in this mid-18th-century building, and his coat of arms is on the Baroque doorway. It now holds the Fine Arts Museum, with paintings by Ribera, born in Xàtiva, and Goya's complete Caprichos and Disparates prints. Its best-known object is a portrait of Philip V hung upside down, in revenge for his ordering the burning of Xàtiva in 1707, and it also keeps a keystone and an angel corbel from the chapel Callixtus III had built in the old main mosque.
Photo: Joanbanjo — Public domain Sant Feliu was built in 1265, after James I's conquest, on the remains of the old Visigothic cathedral, and it is among the oldest churches in the Kingdom of Valencia. Its porch is held up by six marble columns taken from Roman buildings, some with the pink of the Buixcarró quarries, and curiously no two are alike. Under the whitewash lay wall paintings from the first half of the 14th century, the largest set of linear Gothic painting kept in the Valencian Community.
Photo: Joanbanjo — CC BY-SA 3.0 Bellveret is a natural lookout on the slope of the castle, above the newer town, with a fine view of the castle, the town, its orchard and the churches of Sant Feliu and Sant Josep. The fortress above is a double one: the Minor Castle and the Major Castle, with most of the walls and towers that survive dating from the Islamic or Gothic period. It served as a state prison of the Crown of Aragon, and in the 16th century Diego de Borja, brother of Saint Francis Borgia, was imprisoned and executed, accused of a murder in the feuds between noble factions.
Photo: Mike1979 Russia — CC BY-SA 3.0
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