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Basilica of San Juan de Baños

Venta de Baños, El Cerrato, Palencia

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Basilica of San Juan de Baños

Monument · Venta de Baños, El Cerrato, Palencia

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.

Photo: David Perez (CC BY 3.0)

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