Village
Lorca is a city in the Región de Murcia with nearly 99,000 inhabitants, the third most populous in the region after Murcia and Cartagena, in the Alto Guadalentín comarca; its municipal area, 1,675 km², is the second largest in Spain after that of Cáceres, with its population spread between the town centre and numerous pedanías. Known as the city of a hundred coats of arms, for its dense heraldic heritage, and as the city of the sun, for its Roman name Eliocroca, its present name comes from the Arabic Lurqa, recorded in the Pact of Teodomiro of 713. It stands out for its medieval fortress, its baroque architecture and its Holy Week processions, a Fiesta de Interés Turístico Internacional (the highest tourism distinction the Spanish State grants to a festival); its old town and castle were declared a conjunto histórico-artístico (Spain's heritage-protection category for urban ensembles of the greatest historical and artistic value) in 1964, the first in the region to receive that distinction.
Monument
A fortress from the 9th to the 15th centuries covering 52,000 square metres with 1,426 metres of walls, one of the largest in Spain; it went from being an Islamic stronghold to a Christian bastion after the conquest by Alfonso X in 1244. It stretches 640 metres in length by about 120 at its widest point, making it one of the largest castles in Spain, and it was a key stronghold in the conflicts between Christians and Muslims on the frontier of the Kingdom of Granada. It is listed as a Bien de Interés Cultural (Spain's highest level of heritage protection) and forms part of the delimitation of the historic-artistic ensemble of Lorca.
Monument
Rectangular tower of the castle of Lorca ordered to be built by Alfonso X the Wise after 1244, 22.7 by 19.4 metres, with walls 4 metres thick and almost 30 metres high, which gives access to the archaeological park with the remains of the Jewish quarter and the medieval synagogue.
Monument
A 14th-15th-century Jewish quarter excavated inside Lorca Castle, containing the only known synagogue in the Region of Murcia, occupied until the expulsion of 1492. The temple, found in 2003 during works on the Parador de Turismo, forms part of a Jewish quarter that began to develop in the 14th century; a coin of Henry III of Castile found beneath the bimah suggests it was built after the antisemitic massacre of 1391 and the preaching of Vincent Ferrer in 1411, when the community sought refuge close to royal power. The preserved tiles correspond to 15th-century Paterna ware. The synagogue consists of a rectangular nave measuring 19.6 by 10.4 metres, divided into a prayer hall, vestibule and women's hall; the archaeological remains are kept in the Municipal Archaeological Museum of Lorca.
Monument
Hotel opened in 2012 by Queen Sofía inside Lorca castle, incorporating archaeological remains and a museum on the medieval Jewish community, 'Luces de Sefarad'.
Monument
Museum in Lorca opened in 2015 in the former convent of San Francisco (sixteenth-seventeenth centuries), with more than 3,400 square metres that make it the largest museum in the Region of Murcia. It is devoted to the workshop and the embroidered treasure of the Hermandad de Labradores and includes audiovisual displays on the history of the Paso Azul of Lorca's Holy Week.
Nature
The Cerro de las Viñas, also called Cabezo de las Viñas, is a Bronze Age Argaric site located in the Lorca hamlet (pedanía) of Coy, on the upper third of a hill, a 913-metre geodetic point that gives its name to the location. The settlement stood on the summit and on the terraces of the northern slope, occupied from the Epipalaeolithic to medieval times, with Roman remains, thanks to the proximity of the Turrilla River and permanent aquifers. On the summit a wall with two towers at its corners has been documented, and on the lower terrace, a second walled enclosure; the dwellings, rectangular, oval or circular, were divided into a storage room and a work room next to the entrance. Its economy was based on agriculture, hunting and gathering.
Nature
Zarcilla de Ramos is the most extensive hamlet (pedanía) of Lorca, at 109.25 square kilometres, within the broad municipal district divided into 38 hamlets. Located in the Pedanías Altas area, at 655 metres above sea level and 28.5 kilometres from the municipal seat by the road from Lorca to Caravaca, it is a village of just over a thousand inhabitants living mainly from rain-fed farming and livestock, with rural tourism on the rise in recent years. Its extensive district brings together numerous sites, among them Piedra del Almirez, Hoya Mora, Peña María, Fuente Atocha and Ojos de Luchena, which give an idea of the variety of its mountain landscape.
Nature
In July 1996 the oldest known remains in Spain of a woman who died from obstructed labour were found at the Cerro de las Viñas de Coy (Lorca), belonging to the Argaric culture, dated between 2000 and 1000 BC. The site, also called Cabezo de las Viñas, occupies the summit and the terraces of the northern slope of a hill 913 metres high, today a geodetic point, next to the Turrilla River. The settlement, walled with square or rectangular towers at its corners, was organised into two-room dwellings, one for storage and living, the other, next to the entrance, as a work space. Its economy was based on agriculture, hunting, gathering and probably herding; the site was also occupied in Epipalaeolithic, Neolithic, Copper Age, medieval and Roman times.
Curiosity
The pedanías of La Paca and Zarzadilla de Totana were hit by the earthquake of January 2005, and in May 2011 a magnitude 5.2 quake with its epicentre in the pedanía of La Hoya caused serious damage in the historic centre of Lorca.
Curiosity
An important archaeological site of the Argaric culture located in the Lorca hamlet of Almendricos, a historic railway junction of Lorca (Murcia). Unlike most Argaric settlements, built on easily defensible hills, El Rincón de Almendricos was a village built on flat ground, with no defensive architecture, devoted mainly to growing legumes and barley through irrigated orchards, whose water channels have been found. Excavated by M. M. Ayala, eleven graves have been found at the site - eight cists and three ceramic urns, the latter containing child burials. Together with Los Cipreses and La Escarihuela, it forms the largest group of flat-ground Argaric settlements in the Lorca district, which, with at least 23 settlements from this period, has one of the highest densities of Argaric sites in the region.
Activity
The Semana Santa (Holy Week) of Lorca is one of the most notable displays of this celebration in Spain, declared a Fiesta de Interés Turístico Internacional (Spain's highest official tourism recognition for a festival) in 2007 and currently a candidate for UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. What sets it apart are the Desfiles Bíblico-Pasionales, parades featuring depictions of the Old Testament and Christian symbolism in which horses, carts and large-scale floats take part, evoking Egypt, Babylon, Rome and Persia. Silk embroidery is another characteristic feature of its processions, marked by the extraordinary rivalry between the Paso Blanco and Paso Azul brotherhoods. Although many processions are older, the parades as known today date back to the late 19th century.
Monument
Fortified enclosure of Andalusi origin rebuilt in Christian times, with the Torre del Espolón and the Torre Alfonsina as its main features. It closes early in the afternoon, so it is usually visited first thing, together with the Jewish synagogue inside it.
Monument
A church built between the 16th and 18th centuries, with its first stone laid in 1536 and works continuing until 1780; it is the most important religious building in Lorca and was declared a Monumento Histórico-Artístico (Spain's heritage-protection status in force until 1985) in 1941. It is the cornerstone of the Plaza de España ensemble, alongside the town hall, the Palacio del Corregidor and the Salas Capitulares, and the most important church in Spain dedicated to San Patricio, chosen because the Battle of los Alporchones was fought there on 17 March 1452. The works, authorised by a papal bull of Pope Clement VII, were built over the old church of San Jorge to a design by Jerónimo Quijano; conceived with cathedral-like airs, its interior comprises three naves, twelve side chapels, choir and rear choir, an ambulatory with radiating chapels and a tall crossing.
Monument
Palace of the 17th and 18th centuries considered one of the finest expressions of civil baroque in eastern Spain, declared a Bien de Interés Cultural in 2008.
Monument
Founded in 1992 and housed in the Casa de los Salazar-Rosso, a 17th-century mansion built by Genoese merchants, it brings together collections on the prehistory and history of Lorca from 30,000 years ago to the end of the Middle Ages.
Monument
Former municipal granary built in 1552 by the master mason Quijano, beside the Plaza del Caño, used historically to store grain in order to regulate its price.
Monument
The Church of Santiago in Lorca is a Baroque church with a Latin-cross floor plan, with a main nave and two side aisles, built in the mid-18th century on the site of a 15th-century hermitage where, according to tradition, the apostle had preached. Marked by earthquakes and fires, the first building (1470-1745) suffered serious damage in the earthquake of 1674; the present one was built between 1745 and 1780 and opened for worship in 1781. A fire in 1911 required restoration until 1915, and the fire of 1936, during the Civil War, destroyed its movable property; in 1940 it was rebuilt and the current bell tower was erected. The earthquake of May 2011 brought down the crossing and the dome; the reconstruction, the work of Juan de Dios de la Hoz, inaugurated in 2018, received the Rafael Manzano Award for its faithfulness to the original fabric.
Monument
The Church of San Mateo was built in Lorca thanks to a grant from King Charles III on land and works that had belonged to the Jesuits. It was built over more than a century: begun around the mid-18th century in Baroque style, by the end of that century the naves had been roofed and the façade advanced; in the 19th century one of the two planned towers was erected and the crossing, presbytery and camarín were completed, and between 1890 and 1897 the slender dome was built, the work of the architect Justo Millán, with Renaissance solutions. It has a Latin-cross floor plan, with side chapels in a gallery. Severely damaged by the 2011 earthquake, it was restored combining anti-seismic techniques with traditional materials.
Monument
The last church built in Lorca's old town, raised in the 18th century, one of those also damaged and restored after the 2011 earthquakes.
Monument
A historic convent complex in Lorca, one of the religious buildings that make up the city's extensive monumental heritage in its old quarter. Its origins date back to the Middle Ages, and the present building brings together elements built between the 16th and 21st centuries; from the old fabric, the Renaissance portal and the 18th-century cloister survive. In front of its door, on 7 June 1488, King Ferdinand the Catholic swore before the Cruz del Privilegio (Cross of the Privilege) to respect Lorca's charters and never separate it from the Crown, before entering the city. Today it houses the Tourist Office and the Lorca Taller del Tiempo Visitor Centre, with an exhibition about the city and a circular audiovisual show, and it is the usual starting point for tourist routes through the old quarter.
Monument
Museum housed in the monumental complex of Santo Domingo, a former convent and church, which displays mantles and standards embroidered in silk and gold belonging to the confraternity of the Paso Blanco; several pieces are declared Sites of Cultural Interest and Lorca embroidery is a candidate for UNESCO Intangible Heritage of Humanity status.
Curiosity
The earthquake of 11 May 2011 damaged medieval, Renaissance and baroque castles, palaces, convents and churches in the historic centre; close to 80 million euros were spent on their restoration, using modern anti-seismic techniques without giving up traditional materials.
Curiosity
The old quarter of Lorca, in the Region of Murcia, including the precinct of its castle, was declared a conjunto histórico-artístico (a Spanish heritage-protection status for historic urban areas, today called conjunto histórico) on 5 March 1964, the first such declaration granted in the region. Within it are found, among other monuments, Lorca Castle (10th-16th centuries), the Plaza de España, with the town hall and the Colegiata de San Patricio, declared a Monumento Histórico-Artístico in 1941, the Plaza del Caño, with the old Pósito (grain store) and the butcheries, the medieval wall with the Porche de San Antonio, from the late 13th century, and the Teatro Guerra, inaugurated in 1861 and the oldest in the region. The town council drew up a Plan Especial de Protección y Rehabilitación Integral (Special Plan for Protection and Comprehensive Rehabilitation) to preserve the ensemble.
Curiosity
Lorca is popularly known as the 'City of the Hundred Coats of Arms' for the many heraldic shields carved on the façades of its historic houses and palaces, a reflection of the power of its old noble families.
Activity
Patron saint festival of this pedanía in the mountains of the north-west of Lorca's municipal district, one of the so-called Pedanías Altas.
Activity
Patron saint festivities of the Lorca hamlet of Purias, in the inland mountains of the municipality, at the foot of the Sierra de Carrasquilla and Sierra de Almenara, between the Guadalentín valley and the sea. They are held in late July in honour of Saint Anne, while another festival, in late June, is dedicated to Saint Peter; some hamlets in the surrounding area also have their own patron saint festivities, such as Altobordo, on 29 June, or Felí, on 26 July. Purias, whose inhabitants are known as purianos, has traditionally lived off agriculture, today centred on greenhouse crops such as tomatoes, onions, broccoli and cucumbers, and has held a weekly market on Sundays since 1994.
Activity
Patron saint festival of Ramonete, one of the many pedanías of Lorca's vast municipal district.
Curiosity
Lorca's vast municipal district —the second largest in Spain— organises its northern half into the so-called Pedanías Altas or Tierras Altas, with settlements such as Coy, Doña Inés, La Paca or Zarcilla de Ramos, situated at an average of more than 500 metres amid sierras and dry-farming fields. The area, the former Campo Coy, preserves Neolithic cave paintings beside the río Luchena and Argaric Bronze Age sites; at Coy was found the so-called León de Coy, from the Iberian period. After the Reconquest, Alfonso X the Wise granted the territory to the concejo of Lorca, and in the 14th century the hunting of wild horses or encebras is documented here. Its lead mines, at Coy and Zarzadilla de Totana, came to produce more than twenty thousand kilos of metal that was transported as far as Puerto de Mazarrón.
Monument
A Baroque manor house on the Plaza de Juan Moreno in Lorca, built at the beginning of the 18th century for the Menchirón Pérez-Monte family and completed in 1711. Notable for its stone doorway bearing the family coats of arms and for its eclectic left wing added in the 19th century.
Monument
The first Franciscan foundation in Lorca, established in 1466, ruined by a flood in 1653 and rebuilt in the 18th century in Baroque style, with Neo-Mudéjar alterations from the early 20th century. It is the sanctuary of the Virgen de las Huertas, patron saint of the city, whose image is the work of the sculptor Sánchez Lozano, and it preserves pictorial treasures such as the camarín of the Virgin and the Tota Pulcra. Looted during the civil war in 1936, it suffered severe structural damage in the 2011 Lorca earthquakes, which destroyed its Neo-Mudéjar bell tower. Beneath the floor of the convent, a 10th-century Islamic palace was found, reused around 1467 to build the hermitage where the Franciscans settled.
Monument
A hermitage built in 1771 in La Hoya, the most populous outlying village of Lorca, on the remains of an earlier 16th-century chapel dedicated to the Virgen de la Salud. The traditional Salud pilgrimage festival is centred on it, in a settlement whose parish identity took shape in the late 18th century.
Monument
The parish church of the Lorca outlying village of Campillo, one of the most populous in the municipality, dedicated to the Holy Cross. The religious and festive life of this settlement in the Guadalentín huerta revolves around it.
Monument
The parish church of the outlying village of Marchena, set in the irrigated land of the Guadalentín valley, whose territory was already settled in Argaric and Roman times. The old rural hermitage of Marchena traditionally hosted performances of the Auto de los Reyes Magos at Epiphany.
Monument
The parish church of the outlying village of Tercia, bordering the built-up area of Lorca and the Sierra de Tercia. Patronal festivities are held in its honour from 29 July to 1 August, along with the Santa Gertrudis pilgrimage festival on the last weekend of June.
Monument
A hermitage dedicated to the patron saint of the outlying village of Doña Inés, built in the mid-20th century at the highest point of the settlement, which separated from Coy in the 1970s. The earliest traces of occupation in its territory date from the Palaeolithic, beside the River Turrilla.
Monument
A hermitage in the centre of the coastal outlying village of Ramonete, on the road linking Águilas with the port of Mazarrón, whose territory began to be settled in the 18th century as the first areas of cultivation were created.
Monument
A Baroque building on the Plaza de España begun in 1670 as the Royal Prison and remodelled in 1737 to become the seat of the town council. Its façade has two superimposed galleries of round arches on marble columns and forms, together with the Collegiate Church of San Patricio, one of the most important monumental ensembles in south-eastern Spain.
Monument
A building on the Plaza del Caño, next to the Municipal Archive and the town hall of Lorca, which was the seat of the council until 1740, when it became the residence of the Corregidor responsible for applying royal law in the city. It now houses court offices.
Monument
A church in the San Cristóbal quarter of Lorca, begun in 1627 and whose final form was not settled until the late 18th century.
Monument
Considered the oldest Christian church in Lorca, built inside the castle precinct after the Christian conquest of 1244. Recent archaeological excavations have brought to light three superimposed churches and an Arab bathhouse, and the complex is being restored so that it can be opened as a museum.
Monument
The church of Saint Francis stands at the crossing of the streets Nogalte and cuesta de San Francisco, right in the historic centre of Lorca, and forms part of the former Franciscan convent erected in the second half of the 16th century; the reforms of the 17th and 18th centuries left almost no trace of its original appearance. Inside, it preserves one of the most important collections of Baroque altarpieces in the Region of Murcia: the High Altarpiece, from 1694, the work of Ginés López; the transept altarpieces, by Jerónimo Caballero; and the altarpiece of Our Lady of Sorrows, from 1691, the work of Manuel Caro. Today it is the seat of the Hermandad de Labradores, Paso Azul, one of the main confraternities of Holy Week in Lorca, declared a Fiesta de Interés Turístico Internacional (Spain's highest tourism-interest distinction).
Activity
A celebration in honour of the patron saint of Lorca that begins on 30 August with the novenas and culminates on 8 September with the Despertá at dawn and the High Mass. The image is carried in a popular pilgrimage procession from its sanctuary to other churches in the city, opening the historic Feria de Lorca.
Activity
A fair held around the third weekend of September with concerts, theatre, funfair rides and activities for all ages, heir to the old duty-free fair granted to Lorca by royal privilege in the time of Alfonso X. Carlos II moved its celebration to the September feast of the Virgin, patron saint of the city.
Historical milestone
The infante Alfonso, the future Alfonso X, took Lorca in 1244 and incorporated it into Castile; from then on the city was turned into the spearhead of the kingdom of Murcia against the Nasrid kingdom of Granada for two and a half centuries.
Historical milestone
In 1442 King John II of Castile granted Lorca the title of noble city, a recognition of its role as a frontier stronghold with Granada and of the military burden borne by its council in the raids and devastations of the frontier.
Historical milestone
The Battle of Los Alporchones pitted, on 17 March 1452, the Castilian troops of Murcia, led by Alonso Fajardo el Bravo, warden of the castle of Lorca, against those of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada, commanded by Malik ibn al-Abbas, who was returning laden with plunder after a raid on the Campo de Cartagena in which they had carried off 40,000 head of livestock and 40 captives, most of them shepherds. Fajardo summoned levies from Aledo, Caravaca and Murcia, gathering some 300 knights and 2,000 foot soldiers, and awaited the Granadans in the fields of Lorca; the battle was decided when the warden defeated Alabez in single combat and took him prisoner. The pursuit reached as far as Vera, in Almería, with 400 Granadans captured against 40 dead and more than 200 wounded on the Castilian side.
Historical milestone
The dam raised on the Guadalentín gave way all at once in 1802 and the flood devastated the lower part of Lorca, the Puerta de San Ginés and almost the whole suburb of San Cristóbal; the disaster left hundreds dead and marked the city's memory.
Historical milestone
The opening in 1885 of the line between Alcantarilla and Lorca connected the city with the peninsular rail network and provided an outlet for its farm produce and for the esparto and tanning industries, in full expansion during the last third of the 19th century.
Historical milestone
The preventive excavations undertaken within the castle enclosure brought to light in 2003 a synagogue of the beginning of the fifteenth century and much of the Jewish quarter, with eighteen dwellings, the butcher's shop and a glass workshop.
Food and drink
A Palm Sunday stew in which hulled wheat is the protagonist, cooked slowly with lamb's trotters and artichokes; its long preparation has always tied it to the family meals of Lorca's Semana Santa.
Food and drink
A celebration sweet formed of layers of sponge cake soaked in syrup, filled with cream and with angel-hair squash jam and covered with meringue, cinnamon and toasted flaked almond; it is reserved for weddings, christenings and great festivities.
Food and drink
Christmas baking of Andalusi root deeply rooted in Lorca: the cordiales join ground almond and angel-hair squash jam on a wafer, and the alfajores mix almond, honey and spices in a roll that is cut into portions.