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It is known as El Escorial de la Mancha. The Monastery of Uclés, XVI century, resembles a castle because in reality it is: it is the mother house of the military Order of Santiago. On the one hand it is a convent and on the other it is a castle. Built on part of the perimeter of the fortress of which the towers of La Plata and Homenaje are preserved, the complex was donated by King Alfonso VIII to the military order to house the armies that would fight in the Reconquest. This, with the arrival of the first master Don Pedro Fernandez, turned it into a monastic fortress.
For a few years, the Order of Santiago had a seat in San Marcos de León that rivaled that of Uclés, until Ferdinand III the Saint united the two in 1230. Since then, Uclés has been considered the seat of this order to which illustrious artists such as Velázquez or Quevedo belonged. It is a place with a lot of history and past, without a doubt.
The castle convent has under its foundations a Celtiberian castro on which the Visigoths built a castrum that the Moors re-made and that, after the Christian conquest, the knights of Santiago took advantage of to build part of their buildings. Although in the course of time they have made so many additions and reforms that it is sometimes difficult to identify each period.
The enclosure extended its walls and defences by about one square kilometre, which left the Cuenca locality in semi-darkness one hour before the neighbouring villages. The loss of the military character of the Santiago order after the Christian thrust accelerated the transformation of Uclés into a monastery. Its construction lasted more than two centuries.
To access the complex, the traveller must cross a first wall of basil that protected the orchard, irrigated by the river Bedija, leaving behind a second wall arranged in a rack, to reach the convent itself, built between 1529 and 1735. At the wing of this Plateresque (begun in 1529 by Charles V), follows a church of Herrerian style (sixteenth century), a large parade ground (seventeenth century), the wings north and south and the main front, churriguresca (1735), under the reign of Philip V.
The convent itself stands on top of an earlier Gothic temple. Built entirely of ashlar stone, it shows a façade decorated with reliefs and crowned by a large statue of Santiago. A large portal leads into the spacious courtyard adorned with low and high galleries, with a cistern in the centre and a staircase that connects with the old rooms and dwellings of the canons, chair, guesthouse, refectory,...
The sacristy, in silver style, and the refectory, which has a coffered ceiling of hexagonal houses, vegetal decoration and medallions with the effigies of the masters of the Order of Santiago, stand out among the different monastic dependencies. The church, with a single nave with a high transept separated by a magnificent grille with the royal weapons and the cross of Santiago, corresponds to the project of Don Juan de la Vega, who worked on it in the sixteenth century.
In the main altar there is a 17th century altarpiece that preserves paintings of the passion of Christ and the glorification of the Savior. In the centre there is a painting by Santiago Apóstol (17th century), by Francisco Ricci. After the disentailment of Mendizábal (1836), the building has been a monastery, boarding school, novitiate, hospital, prison and seminary.
The tomb of the poet Jorge Manrique and his father Don Rodrigo Manrique, master of Santiago, is located in the church of the monastery of Uclés, whose complex has been declared a National Monument. Within its walls he wore the habit of Santo Domingo de Guzmán, founder of the Dominicans.
The traveller will have seen the monastery, even from a distance, because it is the backdrop to the last scene of the film Alatriste, when the captain of the famous Arturo Pérez Reverte series dies in the battle of Rocroi. And if you are interested in visiting the enclosure, you should know that the entrance is free. The schedules, subject to availability, are, in summer, from 10 to 18 hours. In winter, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. If audioguide is contracted the price is 4 euros.
