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Church of Our Lady of los Remedios

Diputación de Málaga
Iglesia Nuestra Señora de los Remedios 2. Ardales

Church of Our Lady of los Remedios

The village of Ardales was finally conquered in 1453 or 1454 by Castilian troops and then handed over by the King Juan 2nd to the Lord of Teba, Don Juan Ramirez de Guzman, who promoted the construction of a Mudejar style church at the latter part of the 15th century.

It was in very bad condition at the end of the 18th century and in 1720 it was rebuilt taking care not to damage the original Mudejar interior decoration. The new church was very alike many Sevillian churches of the era. This was because since the reconquest Ardales no longer belonged to the diocese of Malaga, but was passed over to the supervision of Seville. In the 19th century the church underwent remodelling work again, but the its exterior and interior remained in tact.

The church is situated next to the medieval fortress of Ardales. The capitals are rectangular with bevelled corners off which several pointed aches rise up. It has three naves divided up by thick columns supported on square bases. These are features from the original Mudejar construction as are the roofs of the naves. The central one has a wooden vault with quad rectangular pieces, while the side ones have another simpler kind of wooden framework.

The presbytery is square, and covered with a Baroque eight-sided vault and separated from the central nave by a large pointed arch. There is a small neo-classical temple that houses a minute wooden polychrome statue of the Virgen de Villaverde. The chapels that close the side naves must have been built in the 18Ith century and they are also covered by the same kind of vaults as the presbytery and are devoted to the Virgen del Rosario and the other to Cristo de la Sangre, which is an interesting sculpture done in 1944 using three different ones that were destroyed in the civil war. The rest of the chapels that are distributed along the naves were also opened in the 18Ith century. The most outstanding of them is perhaps the chapel of San Isodor, built in 1783 to give the church a wider perspective. It has a square floor layout and is covered with a semi spherical vault and at the back, behind a half-round arch; there is a polygonal chapel. This chapel is decorated with intricate plasterwork figures. The sacristy, which has a rectangular floor plan, is next to this and it connects with the main altar by a passageway. It is covered by a half-barrel vault.. There is a choir from the XVIIIth century at the foot of the church.

As for the exterior, the main front is cemented brick, which is opened by a half-pointed arch that are set into a frame of two pilasters that in turn uphold an entablement, which has the date 1723 inscribed on its edge. Above this there is a semicircular split pediment with a vaulted niche between pilasters crowned with another pediment with a óculo on top. It is finished off by a triangular pediment that houses a cross. This front is supposedly the work of Diego Antonio Diaz who works for the Seville Diocese. Some of his works, like the front of the Convento de Santa Rosalîa en Sevilla, are related to the one in Ardales.

A square brick tower, which was probably from the 18th century, rises up next to the main front. It seems to be the work of Antonio Matîas de Figueroa, the Master builder of the Seville church body and who also worked on the front of the church in the neighbouring town of Campillos. The tower has a simple prismatic form and seems to be built on the site of a previous one. Its lower tires are very simple in design and only broken up by the presence of some window slots for light to penetrate. The decoration was left for the upper tiers which is made up of pilasters and green glazed tiles. It is topped off by a octagonal capital and a roof covered with rhombus shaped-tiles.

How to get there

Plaza Iglesia, 39
Zip Code 29550

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Discover more about the province of Malaga

Discover more about the province of Malaga