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Shrine of la Vera Cruz

Caravaca de la Cruz, Noroeste, Murcia

1 Villages · 19 Monuments · 2 Activities · 1 Curiosities · 3 Historical milestones · 2 Food and drink

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Shrine of la Vera Cruz

Monument · Caravaca de la Cruz, Noroeste, Murcia

The Real Basílica-Santuario de la Vera Cruz, of Islamic origin, stands atop a hill, inside the castle of Caravaca de la Cruz. It was rebuilt from 1617 onward on an old medieval chapel that kept a Lignum Crucis -a fragment of Christ's cross-, designed by friar Alberto de la Madre de Dios, and was finished in 1703. The Baroque façade, added in the 18th century with marbles and jasper from the area, functions as a great open-air altarpiece. It houses the relic of the Cruz de Caravaca, toward which pilgrimages have been made since the 13th century, and since 2003 it has held a perpetual Jubilee Year every seven years, a privilege shared only by Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago de Compostela and Santo Toribio de Liébana. It was declared a Monumento Histórico-Artístico in 1944 and a Basílica Menor in 2008.

Photo: No machine-readable author provided. Darabuc~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). (Public domain)

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