Ermita de San Pelayo y San Isidoro: Relocated Romanesque Church Remains in Madrid
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.2
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Spain
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval
- Civilizations
- Kingdom of León
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page8 sections
History
Ermita de San Pelayo y San Isidoro is the relocated remains of a medieval Catholic church in Madrid, Spain, built by Christians in the Romanesque period around the mid-12th century outside the southern walls of Ávila. It stood opposite the Gate of Malaventura and was initially dedicated to Saint Pelagius, a child martyr associated with Córdoba. Its later history connected the building with Saint Isidore, the patron saint of Madrid and a traditional protector of farmers.
Foundation and changing dedication
The church’s architectural form and decoration associate it with the Romanesque churches of San Vicente, San Pedro, and San Andrés in Ávila. A document from 1250 states that the church was exempt from taxation. An inscription dated 1270 may record a second consecration, possibly marking the change in dedication from Saint Pelagius to Saint Isidore. A tradition also held that the church possessed relics of Saint Isidore before their transfer to León in 1062, although this claim concerns a period before the church’s generally accepted construction date.
After the medieval period, surviving information about the church becomes scarce. Knowledge of its history re-emerged in the 19th century when the book of the Confraternity of San Isidore was found in the sacristy of San Nicolás in Ávila. By then, the church belonged to the Association of Farm Workers, and its dedication had become associated with Saint Isidore.
Demolition and dispersal
The building had fallen into poor condition by about 1854, prompting Ávila City Council to order its demolition. The Association of Farm Workers offered the church to the council, but the offer was declined. State confiscation laws, which seized and sold ecclesiastical and institutional property, were applied to the church in 1876. The building was demolished in 1877, and its remains were sold to private buyers. A resident of Ávila acquired most of the stone, while Emilio Rotondo Nicolau, a Madrid-based engineer and businessman interested in archaeology, purchased the remaining ashlar blocks and architectural elements.
Relocation to Madrid
Rotondo Nicolau first tried unsuccessfully to sell the remains to San Sebastián City Council. In 1893, he sold them to the Royal Academy of History for 18,000 pesetas. The plan was to reassemble the church in the gardens of the Archaeological Museum, where it would serve both as a Romanesque relic and as a chapel for Sunday Mass celebrated according to the Mozarabic Rite, an old Hispano-Christian liturgical tradition preserved in parts of Spain.
The museum project was not carried out. In 1896, after the statesman Cánovas del Castillo took an interest in the monument, the museum transferred it to Madrid City Council. The council ordered its relocation to Buen Retiro Park, under the supervision and design of the architect Ricardo Velázquez Bosco. The reconstructed remains were later neglected. In the early 21st century, Madrid City Council improved the site and recovered dispersed stones, capitals, shafts, cornices, and other architectural pieces.
The remains are listed as an element of the Red List of Heritage and form part of the Paseo del Prado and Buen Retiro cultural landscape, recognized as a landscape of arts and sciences. In Ávila, the church’s former location is commemorated by an area known as the Atrium of San Isidro.
Remains
The surviving material represents a small Romanesque church constructed from squared limestone ashlar. Its original plan had a single nave with a wooden roof and an eastern apse. The apse was semicircular and covered by a half-dome, preceded by a straight section with a barrel vault divided into two parts. Dispersed and recovered blocks, capitals, shafts, cornices, and other architectural elements are now accommodated in Buen Retiro Park, where the material survives in a ruinous condition.
Doorways and nave
The nave had two entrances, one on the south side and another at the west end. Part of one doorway survives with three semicircular archivolts, or recessed arched bands, resting on abaci joined to form a continuous horizontal support. The impost was carved with four-petaled roses enclosed in circles. The same rosette pattern appeared on the archivolts, although it is now only faintly visible.
Apse and windows
The apse originally contained three semicircular windows framed by archivolts and chambranles, the dressed stone surrounds of openings. Two remain. Their deeply splayed openings narrow inward and end in thin arrow-slit openings. The archivolts rest on abaci and capitals decorated with leaves and birds holding their beaks between their legs, a motif also found at San Andrés in Ávila.
Sculptural decoration
The capitals combined zoomorphic and vegetal forms. Despite the deterioration of the stone, capitals with acanthus leaves remain visible. Drawings by Van den Wyngaerde, Repullés, and Francisco Aznar preserve details of the church that are no longer fully legible in the surviving material. They indicate that the straight section of the apse contained single blind arches, with capitals decorated by vegetal forms, lions, and birds. The sculptural treatment has been connected with the workshops associated with San Pedro and San Vicente and with the portals of San Andrés in Ávila.
