Description
This family funerary crypt, neo-Byzantine style, was built by order of Fernando Ruano Prieto, Barón de Velasco, under the patronal chapel of his same family in Iglesia de San Juan. The design is by the architect Antonio Flórez Urdapilleta, highlighting its resplendent golden tesserae, the apse presided over by a Pantocrator, surrounded by four cherubs and three statues sculpted in Carrara marble by the Valencian José Capuz, which represent the Theological Virtues (Faith, Hope and Charity).The most unique thing is its ingenious mechanism of movement through rails for access to the mortuary niches. These were hidden behind the statues and were activated when someone had to be buried. This is the space that Juan Eslava Galán had chosen to hide the Templar tombstone in his work, which in fiction he calls Crypt of Barón de Velillos. The author also recreates the destruction suffered during the Spanish Civil War. (…) They entered a narrow room. To the right started a monumental flight of descending stairs, made of Carrara marble, very destroyed and full of rubble. They descended with their flashlights on. The staircase described half a circumference and led to a tiny underground room in the shape of a Greek cross. One side of the cross was occupied by a small altar so thoroughly destroyed that it was almost unrecognizable. They shined their flashlights toward the ground. In the center, three monumental Carrara marble sculptures, two meters high, lying one on top of the other, were piled up, making traffic difficult.
