Description
Next to the now-vanished Castillo de la Tercia, the old Church of Nuestra Señora María de la Consolación was built at the end of the 15th century, intended to serve as the castle's chapel.It has a single rectangular nave in the shape of a Latin cross, flanked by side chapels and presided over by an apse-less presbytery. The church is covered by a Mudéjar coffered ceiling with a simple tie-and-collar-beam structure, with five ornamented tie beams decorated with strapwork resting on corbels, which, beneath the choir loft, rest on a transverse beam supported by an Ionic column and a wooden bracket decorated with large acanthus leaves. In this same spirit of austerity, the side doorway was built a century later: a lintelled opening with Tuscan pilasters and no decorative elements. During the Civil War, the wooden altarpiece presiding over the Señor de las Aguas was destroyed, and in 1949 another was installed in its place, presiding over the Señor de la Capilla, a name by which this church is also known. The current bell tower, which replaced a bell gable that collapsed in the early 20th century, was built in 1956–57 on a square, prism-shaped base, with a first section featuring vertically arranged oculi on its shaft, framed by a shared moulding; the second section, smaller and octagonal, has pinnacles at its corners and pairs of semicircular arches for the bells, and is topped by a pyramidal spire.
