Logbook · 6 places

What to see and do in Venta de Baños

What to see and do in Venta de Baños (El Cerrato, Palencia): 6 places across monuments, nature, activities and curiosities, with a photo and a Google Maps location.

1 Villages · 2 Monuments · 2 Historical milestones · 1 Food and drink

How far each place is from the centre of Venta de Baños

Basilica of San Juan de Baños 1.8 km

Towns near Venta de Baños

Spain › Castile and León › Palencia › El Cerrato › Venta de Baños

What to see and do in Venta de Baños

Venta de Baños
Village
Venta de Baños is a municipality in Palencia with about 6,370 inhabitants, which arose in 1860 beside the railway station built near the old venta of Baños de Cerrato, from which it took its name. During the 20th century it became the most important railway junction in the northern half of Spain, a meeting point for the lines to Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, the Basque Country, France and Portugal; its station, with an inn and waiting rooms, was for decades an obligatory stop for trains such as the Sud Express Paris–Lisbon or the legendary “Shanghai” between Vigo and Barcelona. In 1931 a sugar refinery was installed there, now gone. On its territory also stands the Visigothic basilica of San Juan de Baños, whose construction was ordered by King Recceswinth in 661.
Basilica of San Juan de Baños
Monument
In Baños de Cerrato, seven kilometres from Palencia and within the municipality of Venta de Baños, stands the best-preserved Visigothic church in Spain, commissioned by King Recceswinth and consecrated, according to tradition, on 3 January of the year 661; it has been a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) since 1897. Basilical in plan with three naves and three apses —only the central one authentic, since the side apses disappeared in a later reconstruction— it retains marble columns reused from Roman buildings and a Visigothic doorway with a horseshoe arch extended by a third of its radius, whose keystone bears a Maltese cross with quatrefoils evoking the goldwork of the period. The founding inscription is also preserved in a 10th-century codex copied from a 7th-century Toledan manuscript.
Founding inscription of Recceswinth
Historical milestone
A marble slab written in hexameters records that the Visigothic king Recceswinth ordered the church to be built in 661, in the third year after the tenth of his reign; the consecration is placed on 3 January.
Abbey of San Isidro de Dueñas
Monument
The abbey of San Isidro de Dueñas, popularly known as La Trapa since it became a Trappist monastery in 1891, has its documented origin in a charter granted by the León king García I in the year 911, although the restoration of the monastic community, previously dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours, was already due to his father, Alfonso III, around 883, when he repopulated the area with Mozarabic Benedictine monks from Córdoba. The monastery was an important centre of pilgrimage thanks to the relics of Saint Isidore of Chios, donated by García I and considered miraculous for protecting fields and harvests. It combines Romanesque elements with the Baroque reconstruction that followed the fire of 1604; its portal is flanked by capitals depicting vices and sins and it retains semicircular apses.
Arrival of the Trappists at San Isidro
Historical milestone
After the disentailments, the monastery was bought in 1891 by Cistercian monks from the French abbey of Sainte-Marie du Désert, who reinstated the Trappist life that still continues in the house.
The chocolate of the monks of La Trapa
Food and drink
The Trappists of San Isidro de Dueñas became famous for making chocolate, an activity that sustained the community for decades and whose commercial production was abandoned in 1960, although the memory is still alive in the comarca.