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San Vicente stands outside the walls of Avila, close to one of the principal gates, and near the north-east angle of the city. The church of San Pedro is similarly placed at the south-east angle, and at the end of a large open Plaza called the Mercado Grande. It is not a little remarkable that so soon after the enclosure of the city within enormous walls two of the most important of its churches should have been built deliberately just outside them, and exposed to whatever risks their want of defence entailed. In plan and general design San Pedro is very similar indeed to San Vicente. It has a nave and aisles of five bays, transepts of unusual projection, a central lantern, and three apsidal projections to the east. The doors, too, are in the centre of the west front, and in the next bay but one to the transept on both sides. The detail is almost all of a simple and extremely massive kind of Romanesque, round arches being used everywhere and uncarved capitals with square abaci. The nave piers are of the commonly repeated section, but very large in proportion to the weight they have to carry. There is no triforium, and the clerestory windows are of moderate size, whilst those in the aisles are very small, and placed as high as possible from the floor. The groining generally is quadripartite, and some of the ribs boldly moulded in a manner which suggests the possibility of this severe Romanesque-looking work being in truth not earlier than circa 1250. The transepts and the western portion of the apses are covered with waggon-vaults, and the apses themselves with semi-domes. The lantern over the Crossing is probably not earlier than A.D. 1350, the mark of the junction with the old work just over the arches into the transepts being still very plainly visible. The vaulting here is very peculiar. Groined pendentives at the angles are introduced to bring the vault to an octagon in plan, but the eight compartments are variously treated; those on the cardinal sides having ordinary vaulting cells over the windows, whilst those on the intermediate or diagonal sides are crossed with four segments of a dome with the masonry arranged in horizontal courses.

The west front has three circular windows, that in the centre having wheel tracery; the north doorway has a richly-sculptured archivolt, which is later in character than the general scheme of the church, having an order of good dog-tooth enrichment, and the abacus is carved with rosettes. There are staircases in the usual position in the angle between the transepts and the aisles, and the apses are divided into bays by engaged shafts with sculptured capitals. There is, in fact, not very much to be said about this otherwise noble and remarkable church, because it repeats to so great an extent most of the features of its neighbour San Vicente. Yet its scale, character, and antiquity are all such as would make us class it, if it were in England, among our most remarkable examples of late Romanesque.

There are several other churches in Avila,[182] but the only one besides those already mentioned of which I made any notes is that of the Convent of San Tomás built between A.D. 1482 and 1493.[183] In a charter of Ferdinand the Catholic, dated May 29, 1490, reference is made to this monastery, together with those of Sta. Cruz, Segovia; San Juan de los Reyes, Toledo; Sta. Engracia, Zaragoza; and other churches in Granada, &c., all of them founded by that King and Queen Isabella. They founded this convent on the petition of Confessor P. W. Tomás de Torquemada.

The convent has been closed for some years, but has just been purchased by the Bishop of Avila, who is now repairing it throughout, with the intention, I believe, of using it as a theological seminary. The detail of the conventual buildings, which surround two cloisters, one of which is of great size, is, as might be expected, of the latest kind of Gothic, and extremely poor and uninteresting, whilst the design of the church, as so often seems to be the case with these very late Spanish churches, is full of interest. It has a nave of five bays with side chapels between the buttresses, short transepts, and a very short square chancel to the east of the Crossing; but the remarkable feature is, that not only is there a large gallery filling the two western bays of the nave and fitted up with seventy stalls with richly-carved canopies, the old choir-book desk in the centre, and two ambons projecting from the eastern parapet, but that there is also another gallery at the east end, in which the high altar, with its fine carved and painted Retablo, is placed. This eastern gallery has also gospel and epistle ambons projecting from its front. Strange as the whole arrangement of this interior is, it strikes me as almost more strange that it should not have been one of constant occurrence in a country where at one period the Coro was so constantly elevated in a western gallery. For there is a sort of natural propriety, as it seems to me, in the elevation of an altar, where folk care at all for the mysteries celebrated at it, to at least as high a level as any part of the church used for service; and undoubtedly the effect of the altar-service to those in the raised Coro is much, if not altogether, marred where the altar is in its usual place on the floor. Here the effect is certainly very fine, whether the altar is looked at from the Coro or from the floor of the nave below it; and from the former in particular, the strangeness of looking across the deep-sunk well of the nave to the noble altar raised high above it at the east is in every way most attractive. The detail of all the architecture here is very uninteresting, though the many-ribbed vaulting is certainly good, and the effect of the dark cavernous nave under the western gallery is very fine in light and shade. Rarely as I trouble my reader with any reference to Renaissance works, I must here in justice say that the great tomb of Don Juan, the son of Ferdinand and Isabella, which occupies the floor below the altar, is one of the most tender, fine, and graceful works I have ever seen, and worthy of any school of architecture. The recumbent effigy, in particular, is as dignified, graceful, and religious as it well could be, and in no respect unworthy of a good Gothic artist. It was executed by Micer Domenico Alexandra Florentesi, who refers to it in a contract which he entered into with Cardinal Ximenes in 1518; but it is said to have been completed as early as A.D. 1498.[184] At present it is necessary to get an order to see it from the Bishop, who has the key of the church; doubtless before long this will not be necessary, but it is well to give the caution, as the convent is some little distance beyond the town-walls, and the Bishop’s palace is in the very centre of the city.

It will be felt, I think, that Avila is a city which ought on no account to be left unseen in an architectural tour in Spain. Fortunately it is now as easy of access as it was once difficult, for the railway from Valladolid to Madrid, in order to cross the Sierra de Guadarrama, makes a great détour by Avila, and thence on to the Escorial is carried on through the mountain ranges with considerable exhibition of engineering skill, and with great advantage to the traveller, as the views throughout the whole distance are almost always extremely beautiful.

I did not stop on my road to see the Escorial: as far as the building is concerned, it is enough I think to know that Herrera designed it, to be satisfied that it will be cold, insipid, and formal in character. And the glimpses I had of it as I passed amply justified this expectation. It is, too, as utterly unsuited to its position on the mountain-side as it well could be. On the other hand, I no doubt lost much in neglecting to make the excursions to the various points of view which it is the fashion for visitors to go to, though it seemed to me that the country in the neighbourhood of La Granja, which one passes on the road from the Escorial to Segovia, was more interesting than this, the mountains being as high and much more finely wooded.

CHAPTER IX.
SEGOVIA.

FEW journeys can be made by the ecclesiologist in Spain which will be altogether more agreeable or more fruitful of results than one to this time-honoured city; for not only does it contain within its walls more than the usual number of objects of architectural and ecclesiological interest, but the road by which it is usually approached, across the Sierra de Guadarrama, presents so much fine scenery as to be in itself sufficient to repay the traveller for his work. It was from Madrid that I made my way to Segovia, taking the railway as far as the little station at Villalba, near the Escorial, and travelling thence by a fairly-appointed diligence. The very fine and picturesque granite ranges of the Guadarrama are generally bare and desolate on their southern side, though here and there are small tracts of oak-copse, or fern, or pine-trees; but, after a slow ascent of some three or four hours, when the summit of the pass is reached, the character of the scenery changes entirely, and the road winds down through picturesque valleys and dips in the hills, which are here thickly covered everywhere with pine-trees of magnificent growth. It is necessary to travel for a time in the dismal plains of Old Castile, to enjoy to the full the sudden change to the mountain beauties of the Guadarrama; and it is impossible not to sympathize with the kings of Spain, who at La Granja, on the lower slopes of the northern side of the range, have built themselves a palace within easy reach of Madrid, and—owing to its height above the sea—in a climate utterly different from, and much more endurable than, that of the capital. Of the palace they have built I must speak with less respect than I do of their choice of its site, for it is now untidy in its belongings and apparently little cared for. A church forms the centre of it, and the whole group of buildings has slated roofs, diversified by an abundance of tourelles. The walls are all plastered and covered with decaying paintings of architectural decorations—columns, cornices, and the like—which give a thoroughly pauperized look to the whole place. But probably the interior of the palace and its famous gardens would correct the impression which I received from a hurried inspection of the exterior only. It is an uninteresting drive of about an hour from La Granja to Segovia. The tower of the cathedral is seen long before reaching the city; but it is not till one is very near to it that the first complete view is gained, and this, owing to the way in which the Alcazar and cathedral stand up upon a rocky height above the suburbs, and the streams which girt it on either side, is very picturesque. Even finer is it as one drives on through the suburb and first finds oneself in presence of the grand old Roman aqueduct, which, still perfect and still in use, spans with its magnificent ranges of arch upon arch the valley which separates the city rock from the hills beyond. Its base is girt closely round by houses and the diligence road passes under one of its arches, so that the enormous scale upon which it is built is thoroughly appreciated, and it is quite impossible not to admire the extreme simplicity and grandeur of the work. Nothing here was done that was useless or merely ornamental, and the whole still stands with but little repair—and that little well done—after so many centuries of good service, as useful as at the first.