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Let’s start our tour of Jerez de la Frontera where the Christians did in 1264 when they took the town back after 5 centuries of rule by the Moors. King Alfonso (nicknamed “the learned or the wise”) successfully stormed the Arab defensive fort (alcázar) and made Jerez part of his kingdom of Castile – one of the states that led to the eventual unification of Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella 2 centuries later. After Alfonso, Jerez stayed on the border (de la Frontera) like several other towns in this area. Nearly 8 centuries later, these places are still surnamed “de la Frontera.”
The Alcázar was once protected by a moat which the city filled in and converted to a strip park in the late 18th century. Called “Alameda Vieja,” today it hosts a multitude of cultural events and a lot of hanging out. It provides views of the agricultural countryside below. The soil in those fields is white and chalky -- excellent for growing the grapes that will become the fortified liqueur called Sherry. Cereal grains also thrive here. While the land is fertile, the people have historically been poor since an ever smaller minority controlled that land. Laborers in those fields even had to live in Jerez. Often a day’s work in the fertile field yielded wages barely enough to buy a loaf of bread. To the landowners such inequality spun off wealth to create beautiful palaces in town. To the workers, such inequality eventually made these area hotbeds of an organized anarchist movement in the 2nd half of the 19th century. Regional government attempted to quell such insurgency with frequent executions.
Here we see a Mudejar arch leading to the Octagonal tower where Alfonso’s troops first raised the flag of Castile in 1264. The Arab city walls once extended about 2.5 miles.
Jerez’s 11th century Alcazar has been restored several times, often without much desire to preserve the Arab history. After the Reconquista, the Christian governors resided here. Above is a neo-classic doorway clumsily placed below Moorish castellation.
The alcázar has several gates but the one above demonstrates Arab defensive architecture. This was the “country gate” – and faced the outside of the Jerez’s walls and was therefore most likely to be attacked by invaders. This entrance is obviously narrow…
…and has a sharp 90 degree turn. This means the invading army could probably get one horseman through at a time and his speed would be greatly reduced by the need for the sharp turn. He’d be a sitting duck on an unlucky steed.
Most of the area inside the alcázar has been turned into a pleasant garden. Here we have the 1471 Torre Del Homenaje currently being restored. In its day, it hovered over the moat and served the function of a castle keep -- the last place that could be captured during an attack. As such, it stored food and provided housing. These typically rise above the walls unlike the 1950's air raid shelters American buried in the ground.
But a few buildings remain showing the glorious Moorish and Reconquista past. This arch leads from the Arab quarters (including baths and mosque) to the Patio of the Arms – where Moors from the Almohad dynasty and Christian governors alike would watch their armies drill.
Here we see the Patio of Arms stretching to the gardens in the distance. At left is the Arab mosque complex, one of the rare buildings left from the extensive rule of the Almohad Moors. The Almohads were a powerful dynasty who long presaged the Taliban in harshly inflicting fundamentalist Islam rule. (Granada’s iconic Alhambra features the palaces of their successors, the Nasrid dynasty who ruled a much smaller realm and, in fact, were pretty much vassals of the Christian kingdom of Castile.). At right is the Baroque Palace of governor Lorenzo Fernández de Villavicencio built in 1664 where the Arab palace once stood.
Here we enter what remains of the Almohad’s palace complex. Today Jerez is Andalusia's 5th largest city but even when the Almohads were at their peak, this was one of the most important towns in Andalusia even though the Almohads kept their capital in nearby Seville.
Jerez once had 18 mosques but only this one remains, probably because it was christened as Santa Maria del Alcázar and used as a chapel. Note the altar here in this rare octaganol space. Looks like it may once have been the Mihrab niche used by worshipers to face Mecca.
Several extensive gardens now separate the fortifications, palaces, and Arab baths...
...including the traditional Arab water gardens.
The Alcázar sometimes served as residence for the Seville-based Almohad dynasty. The Moors lost Jerez twice to the Reconquista after they themselves took it from a Visigoth army ten times the size of their invading army in the 8th century. The Moors first lost it to Fernando III but recaptured it in 1251. Thirteen years later they lost it for good after a 5-month siege led by Barcia Gómez Carillo – a man whose life the Moors had spared shortly before.
At the end of our tour of the alcazar, we visited the baroque palace of the powerful Villavicenio nobles. Their tall tower houses the second camera obscura in Spain. Here our guide shows the white disc which, when the room darkens…
…will show us a 360 degree view of the town projected by an overhead lens. The camera obscura led to the eventual invention of photography. As in an old box camera, the lens projects an upside-down image onto a wall of a room or, in this case, a disk lined up parallel to the lens. Before they had lenses, the Chinese would use pinholes as early as the 5th century BC. The smaller the hole, the sharper the image. Alhacen, the Arab equivalent of Leonardo da Vinci, used a lens to create the first true camera obscura around 1000 AD. We found that many Andalusian towns would have a camera obscura as a tourist attraction. Here we see Jerez’s cathedral, next door to the alcazar. Let’s visit it next.
Let’s now look at Jerez’s cathedral and its surroundings. This is a building that time has made eclectic. It took so long to build that architectural fashions changed. Also note the two statues in the picture above: one of Catholicism’s most important popes who made Jerez into a diocese and the other of a captain-of-industry, in this case, the sherry industry.
This site is just down the hill from the Alcazar (where this picture was taken). By now you’ve guessed that this was the site of the Arab mosque when the Christians recaptured the city at the end of the 13th century. It’s not clear whether they tore down the mosque and built a new church – or just modified the mosque. What was there was eventually torn down to make way for this fusion church with its Renaissance dome capped by an Andalusian Azulejo-tiled beanie.
The hilly site is accommodated by an elegant set of stairs leading to an elevated plaza. This full frontal view suggests the various styles struggling to capture the architect’s vision. Gothic flying buttresses support a Baroque facade. The separate bell tower is is reminiscent of a minaret and is the only part left from the earlier church torn down in 1695.
Here’s a close-up of the tower with the town’s seal displayed below a gothic window.
The annual wine festival starts on these steps each year. The previous church deteriorated badly and when the roof of the nave began to sink in 1679, the town solicited proposals to replace what was by then at least a 300-year-old building. Five were submitted but the town fathers instead tasked the design to a Jerez native, Diego Moreno Meléndez, who would build several other churches in his home town.
In 1700, construction paused while Europe fought the War of Spanish Succession over who would succeed Charles II who had funded the rebuilding efforts. In 1715, Seville’s archbishop continued construction. At this time, this was a collegiate, not a cathedral. As such, it was the headquarters for a community of secular clergy who lived together not unlike a religious order, but with the vows. By the early 1700s, the Spanish Baroque was dictating ornate facades around church doorways...
…Including this elaborate Plateresque arch which barely makes enough room among the ornamentation for a statue of the Immaculate Conception.
Below the central window is this Transfiguration scene seen above. It's appropriate for a church dedicated to The Savior. Here we have an armless Christ but Moses and Elijah are no-shows. The alpha apostles Peter, James, and John appear to be sufficiently awed even though in need of a good cleaning.
The central door is flanked on each side by elaborate facades over smaller entries. Here’s the Baroque scene of the Adoration of the Magi above the Gospel (left) side door.
Walking around to this composite picture of the long Epistle (right) side of the nave, we see further buttress work centering around another elaborate entry at the crossing. Another Gothic pig with Baroque lipstick.
Above the door we have a bishop's coat-of-arms, perhaps that of the Cardinal Arias who got the build program restarted in 1715 after the hiatus caused by the war. Above that is an Annunciation screen we’ll look into at our next picture. God the Father appears above that scene holding the world. Above him on either side are angels although one has lost her head. On either side of the Annunciation scene we see statues, probably of Saint Francis at right and perhaps a Dominican at left.
Here’s the central Annunciation scene, and it’s a fixer-upper. Archangel Gabriel will have a bit of trouble getting back to heaven with those broken wings (and won’t even be able to hitchhike without a thumb –or hand.) Maybe you'll give him a lift when you go. Mary’s halo seems to multi-task as a pigeon discourager. The Holy Spirit seems to be hovering in the shadows here. Why are there never any pigeons on statues of the Holy Spirit? Professional courtesy?
Lest we get too baroque on this side, we always have gargoyles to bring us back to the Gothic.
This is obviously Pope John Paul II who elevated this Collegiate church to a cathedral (and made Jerez a diocese) in 1980....
But who’s this mixed among the statues of saints, angels and popes in the cathedral complex? Another Angel, no doubt, an angel of commerce.
It’s a 1997 statue of Manuel Maria Gonzalez Angel who came to Jerez in 1835 at age 23 to start a Sherry producing company. Today we know his brand as Tio Pepe, a dry white that’s the most popular Sherry in the world. His statue is most likely on the land of his factory right next to the cathedral. (When your factory charges admission, you call it a “bodega.”) Jerez is synonymous with Sherry – literally. It’s how the Brits pronounced “Scherisch,” the word the Moors’ used to describe this town. The land to the north and west contains a soil called “albariza” which can be up to 60% chalk, making it ideal soil for growing Sherry grapes. After picking, the grapes are aged in a connected series of casts (solera) which mixes old wine with new – so you are drinking a blend that includes the first grapes ever put into production. In your glass of Tio Pepe, you probably have one or two molecules from 844. As M told 007 in “Diamonds are Forever,” Sherry has no vintage year; it’s all old wine in new bottles.
By his name, Manuel Maria González Angel appears to be thoroughly Spanish, but many of the sherry producers intermingled with British Catholics who fled here when Elizabeth I’s Act of Supremacy in 1559 made advancement for them nearly impossible in England. Britain is also a huge customer for Sherry. Tourists as well as the streets are full of distilleries, many of them with tours. The González Bypass plant that makes Tio Pepe (named after Angel’s Uncle Joe) features a pavilion designed by that French bridge builder named Eiffel.
Let's take a quick look inside of this elegant space that moves toward a large dome over the crossing. The neo-classic Corinthian pillars are unadorned except for the large statues of the apostles, fitting for a collegiate church.
For an Andalusian church, the main altar is quite restrained, especially when one sees the gold retables found in many of the parish churches in this city.
The interior has five naves. The exterior was once called the last Gothic church – but that was before the Gothic Revival movement started in England a few decades later.
Except for the figures of the saints, the decoration on the Renaissance dome suggest the Moors influence.
Let's now take a quick look at two squares, starting with the older. The small but exquisite Plaza de la Asunción unfolds in Gothic, Renaissance, and 1950-ish splendor, just up the hill from the cathedral. The square seems misnamed, as there is no church of the Asunción here. It does have one of the oldest churches in town, Saint Dionysius, behind the construction barrier at top right in the first picture. The former town hall (lower half of the same picture) is a Renaissance secular classic with its loggia within loggia.
The Antiguo Cabildo (old town hall) was the city council chamber when it was completed in 1575; by then, Andalusia had discovered the Italian Renaissance in a big way. Today it’s the library. This exquisite building shows two facades, each a jewel in its own right, including the double-arched Italian logia at left. The Plateresque facade features large statues of the mythical Hercules and the real Julius Caesar both of whom served in Andalusia. When this building was built, Spain was at its height – THE world power with land on every continent then known to them. But its deficit was huge and gold from the Americas created massive inflation. Loans from foreigners kept afloat Spain’s king for the second half of the 16th century, Philip II who was neither Hercules nor Caesar. Spain’s power and wealth soon faded and its intellectual life became third rate while the Inquisition strangled thought. But its architecture remains. At left is the sculpture that names the plaza…
…It’s a 1952 pillar honoring the Assumption (Asunción), Mother Mary’s beam-me-up-Scottie moment, and includes a buffed Lord of the Touchdown at center. Statues of the apostles wrap around the column. Numeric graffiti at the base is its pièce de résistance. At least they matched the color of the Renaissance building behind it.
This 1457 work-in-progress is the church of Saint Dionysius, a Greek who served as pope while Rome still persecuted Christians. He became the town’s patron saint because on his feast day in 1264, King Alfonso the Wise took the town back from the Moors. The barriers kept us from seeing the baroque interior modified in the 18th century by Diego Antonio Díaz who had recently finished the nearby cathedral’s façade (and a whole lot of important work in Seville.) That renovation included moving the main altarpiece from the old Jesuit church in town. (Why the Jesuits would give up such a piece is puzzling as it would be nearly a half century before they would be kicked out of Spain.) This church is nearly as wide as the square. Its pointed arch door suggests the Mudejar influence. At left (insert) is the Torre de la Atalaya, a secular watch tower from the mid-fifteenth century that is physically attached to the church. Repairs here are likely to take a long time as archeology finds slow the work. Mañana!
Next, let's look at a square now modernized and at the center of Jerez activity, the Plaza del Arenal. It combines the modern with the classic (and a bit of propaganda or patriotism.) The town meeting place since the days of the Moors, the Plaza starts just outside the Alcázar.
Rising above the birds of Paradise and a busy fountain is this memorial to Jerez native-son Miguel Primo de Rivera who became dictator of Spain in the 1920s. He grew up in a town of dissolute landowners among what may have then been the poorest agricultural workers in Europe. (Garlic soup was a not uncommon peasant dinner.) He served in the Philippines and Cuba as the US stripped these possessions from Spain. However, Primo de Rivera’s conquests in the bedroom were legendary. In 1923 he led the military in overthrowing parliament. The ultimate agent of change, he imposed martial law and tried to modernize the economy and remove the old political order. But the party animal he became growing up in Jerez flourished during his dictatorship; many of his intoxication-fueled edicts would have to be annulled the next morning. He resigned in 1930. His eldest son started the fascist Falange party that led to 4 decades of Franco’s rule, making Rivera’s 7 years of power seemed mild and progressive.
Nearly one whole long side of the plaza is anchored by this elegant building with lower logia reminiscent of the Rue de Rivoli which faces Paris’s Louvre.
This elevator reminds us that Jerez has buried its cars – or at least its parking lots. A great idea to preserve the historical ambience while accommodating progress. In a sense, it’s a fitting tribute to the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera who seized power when few cars motored through Spain. When he resigned, it had Europe’s best roads and Barcelona had its subway. Much of this was financed by public debt to be repaid when economic expansion occurred because of the improved infrastructure. This is no Laffer matter so get your shovels ready.
Another church under reconstruction was San Miguel’s, a block or so from the Plaza del Arenal. Its tiled tower rises above the surrounding buildings. As shown in the top picture, the tower is centered at the front entrance -- not usually the case in Andalusia.
This is a building with elegant entrances on three sides. The building started in Ferdinand and Isabella’s realm, around 1484, before they had permanently driven the Moors from Spain. They visited the area and felt the small chapel there was inadequate for the parish’s needs. Early work was Gothic but as centuries elapsed and building continued, Renaissance (nice dome!) and Baroque elements were added.
Above the ornate center entrance -- between door and steeple -- the warrior/archangel Miguel triumphs over the decapitated head of the devil -- Plateresque decoration from the 17th century.
The European Union is funding the restoration of this elegant façade: the work of a Jerez native architect, Diego Moreno Meléndez who worked on Jerez’s cathedral but is buried here. Original construction took up the last 3 decades of the 17th century so let’s hope the remodeling is faster as we hope to get inside San Miguel’s some day. He was assisted in designing the doorway by the Seville’s master of the Baroque entrance, Leonardo de Figueroa. We’ll see a lot of Figueroa’s work when we share the Seville photos.
This side door appears to be earlier -- and Gothic...
...and includes this statue of the Immaculate Conception under a Gothic canopy.
The opposite side contains what may be the entrance to the Baroque chapel between Corinthian pillars and elaborate and well-preserved religious statuary...
...with a few secular statues including this one with grapes -- not a bad icon for this center of viniculture...
...and at the center of this statue group is this deep niche with a statue of the Good Shepherd complete with lost sheep wrapped around his neck.
San Miguel's three-tier tower starts square and rises into an octagon with its azulejo-tiled roof, common in Andalusia (and very common in Jerez).
Let's now check out some of the interesting exteriors in the old town, especially in the Barrio of Santiago which is the heart of the Roma (Gypsy) section. The large Gypsy population here is the driver for Jerez's fame as a center for Flamenco.
Churches built with Sherry money appear on nearly every block in the old city. Here’s the church of Our Lady of Victory near the Roma (Gypsy) barrio. This was built as a convent in the 16th century but the residence area has been converted to house civilians while the chapel remains as a church – and a headquarters for one of the brotherhoods who carry elaborate floats in processions during religious festivals.
Here’s the front of the Church of San Juan de los Caballeros (St. John of the Knights). When King Alfonso the Wise took Jerez de la Frontera in 1264, he created six parishes. Tradition holds that the king’s knights signed a document here pledging to defend the city on behalf of Alfonso’s successor, Sancho IV. There was much dispute about who should succeed Alfonso X so Sancho needed these commitments. This 15th century church resembles a fortress except for the 17th century facades around the front and side doors. The façade shown here rises to a bell tower capped in blue azulejo tile. The lower section is attributed to Alonso Vandelvira, the son of Andalusia’s great Renaissance architect Andrew. The tip-off is the double Tuscan columns – a frequent motif by Alonso Vandelvira. His greatest contribution was not in stone but in ink: He documented his famous father’s ideas on stone cutting. That text would train countless architects in both the old and new Spanish worlds.
On San Juan plaza, within yards of the church of San Juan de los Caballeros, is the more recent church of the Inmaculada (Immaculate Conception).
This building seems to pay homage to the older churches of Jerez using modern materials including these tile inlays.
But why this town would need another church nearly next door to their 15th century Suan Juan de los Caballeros with its Baroque interior is puzzling.
Most tourists think of Jerez as the home to horses and liqueur but it can lay claim (which it fights with Sevilla over) as the home of the Flamenco. Flamenco developed as a folk art among the Roma (often called Gypsies) who migrated into the fertile mix of Arab, Christian, and Jewish populations of Andalusia. It is to Andalusia what Jazz is to Americans. Unfortunately, we arrived on a bank holiday and so could not see inside The Centro Andaluz de Flamenco shown here now occupying a residence of one of the noble Villavicencio gang now called the Permartin Palace. (This was built in the second half of the 18th century, about a century after the pink palace in the alcázar that housed the Villavicencio governors). This building now houses the largest public archives relating to the flamenco art form. While performances are held here often, the largest flamenco festival occurs at the bull fighting stadium during the activities around the grape harvest.
In Arab days, the Jerez’s walls were 2.5 miles long and enclosed about 115 acres housing 16,000 inhabitants. Today, only the Alcazar is protected by the walls although towers such as this are often incorporated into the cityscape.
This historic section often retains its classic doorways.
Here’s another spectacular Baroque doorway on the bishop’s palace on Arroyo square that leads to the cathedral. Note the twisted Plateresque pillars on each side of the door…
…and the detailed folds around the ciborium on the second floor above the ornate balcony. Note the papal flag here. This palace is one of several elegant 18th century civil buildings on Arroyo Square, just in front of the cathedral. Arroyo Square is the oldest part of Jerez and once the site of bullfights and equestrian shows.
A candidate for best Plateresque window in town (or maybe any town except that it could use a bit of restoration) is this 1537 corner window of the otherwise plain palace of Ponce de Leon de Gracia, the oldest Renaissance palace in Jerez. Builders of Spanish Renaissance palaces would often add such elaborate corner windows to impress viewers on both streets as to their prestige. The concept was thought to have been borrowed from Flanders where such decorated windows would be carved in wood. This particular window seems to have been commissioned to commemorate a marriage (note the relief figures of male (right) and female (left). Family shields (probably of husband and wife) are interspersed at the bottom between angels with seriously bent necks. The inscription seems to suggest the Vanity of Vanities from the Book of Ecclesiastes.
He we see the Church of our Lady of Mount Carmel, named after Mary’s appearance on a cave-filled mountain in northern Israel held sacred all the way back to at least the Canaanites and forward to the prophet Elijah. While the order of the Carmelites started there, it was considerably revived here in Andalusian Spain. Consequently, churches in honor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel are found in most towns near the coast. Jerez is known for its festival on her July feast day. This is pretty typical of Jerez churches: pretty plain on the exterior except for Plateresque or Baroque doorways. The tile plaque honors some 1925 event and seems to be covering a window on this otherwise symmetrical frontage. It shaves the top of another typical Andalusian Renaissance round window. If you can cut stone like that, do it!
The revival of the Carmelites in Andalusia is primarily the work of St. John of the Cross who assisted Saint Teresa of Ávila in the second half of the 16th century in reviving the discipline of the order. Nearly every town in this area had a Carmelite convent. In Spain, the Mount Carmel Mary is also the patron of the navy (a big deal in this one-time world empire) and is known as Mary, Star of the Sea. Some of you remember scapulars (admit it, now). Carmelites were big proponents of these dog-tag like talismans. You couldn’t be sent to hell if you were wearing one. Maybe the original “get out of jail free” card.
The second story of the entrance façade is small and delicate, but still too large for the statue of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. Note the curtains, such folds let Baroque sculptors show off their craft. This area seems to have been well restored…
Yet the tower sprouts grass although otherwise seems to be in good shape. The Carmelites were great rivals of the Jesuits and the feud was so intense that the Pope had to put a stop to it in 1698 by threatening excommunication for anyone who furthered the rivalry.
...and about those Jesuits. Here is their Jerez building, now a multi-use cultural center as it has nearly perfect acoustics. It’s a medium sized venue and its in the heart of the Flamenco district. The Plateresque façade remains along with the painting of Jesuits in black. At left, hiding behind the tree, is the seal of the Jesuits...
...which may look familiar to those of you who have served time under that order. Note the letters HIS from IHΣ, the first three Greek letters of Jesus’ name. Most of the other symbolism is adapted from Ignatius Loyola’s family crest including the red bands which represent seven brothers in his ancestry who fought bravely in the 1300s.
This elegant 19th century neoclassical mansion in the upscale neighborhood an easy walk from the old city is now the Palacio del Tiempo – the clock museum. It’s called the Palacete de la Atalaya. We couldn’t enjoy its lovely gardens, complete with peacocks, because the rains were fairly unrelenting…
…but inside we were treated to a combination of high tech (i.e. holograms) displays and over 300 old fashioned clocks from various eras stretching back to the 16th century. This may be the largest collection of valuable clocks in the world. Yes, we were there at noon when many of them went off in approximate synchronization. The digital clock in my camera time stamped it all. In Spain at the Museo de los Relojes, the bell tolls (or beeps or buzzes) for thee.
Besides being famous for Sherry and Flamenco, Jerez is also the center for horsemanship. Next to our hotel was the famed Royal Andalusian School of Equestrian Art. The Austrian Lipizzan horses that Patton rescued in WWII came from here and most of the better horses of the world have Andalusian roots after the Arabs crossed their fiery steeds with Iberian stock during their 8th century invasion. In the 16th century, Hapsburgs ran both Spain and Austria and decided to breed horses like they did their own children. They got better results with the horses.
The school trains riders and horses in Dressage, an art form where the rider with minimum movement gets the horse to perform elaborate movements such as walking sideways while listening to classical music. Performances are held several times per week in this large arena whose pseudo columns and rounded windows salute the Spanish Renaissance architectural style which ended long before this structure was built.
The mission of the Real Escuela Andaluza del Arte Equestre is to preserve the proud traditions of riding. Spain has long been an interesting place to be a horse. Much of the Arab success when they quickly took most of Iberia after 711 was because of the light cavalry – fast horses minimally burdened by the heavy armor that slowed down the Christian Knights who fought them.
Jerez became the focal point for the Andalusian horses because of a nearby Carthusian monastery where the monks bred horses into ideal specimens called Carthusian or Carujanos. This started when the King wanted to merge the quick Arab horses with the plodding bloodlines from the North to produce a one-size-fits-all steed. Some breeders resisted and gave their stock to the monks who went on to develop this graceful horse with a bony protrusion on its muzzle suggesting unicorns as ancestors. (Maybe they just have a few Hapsburgs on their family tree, proof of unintelligent design.) While foals are dark coated, mature horses are typically grey. These highly trained horses are pretty much the end of the evolutionary path for Andalusian horses that were around in Paleolithic times, as seen in the art on the walls of nearby caves.
Who needs the Spanish Renaissance? Those of you who know France may detect some similarity between this building that serves as the riding school’s headquarters and Paris’s Opera Garnier. They share the same architect, Charles Garnier, who termed his style Neo-Baroque.
Unlike Garnier's Opera, which wraps around an elegant block in Paris and must present a somewhat homogeneous facade on all sides, the Palacio Duque de Abrantes provides a rectangular-feeling backside to contrast with the twin octagonal towers of its front.
Above is a detail of the clock pediment seen in the photo above. The neo baroque meets the classical caryatid.
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