Renaissance Monumental Ensembles of Úbeda and Baeza
The number of Wikipedia languages with an article is our measure of how widely known a site is. How many people have stood at a site or want to go will be shown once enough people use the app.
Seals, your want-to-go list and the year you stood here are kept in the iPhone app.
How it came to be
Úbeda and Baeza are two small neighbouring towns in the province of Jaén in Andalusia. Their urban form goes back to the 9th century: under the Umayyad emir Abd al-Rahman II, Úbeda was re-established as Ubbadat al-Arab, Úbeda of the Arabs. In the 13th century Ferdinand III of Castile took both towns, retaking Baeza in 1227.
In the 16th century families from the two towns rose to the top of the Spanish administration. Francisco de los Cobos of Úbeda became Secretary of State to Charles V, and his nephew Juan Vázquez de Molina served Philip II. The architect Andrés de Vandelvira built the Holy Chapel of the Saviour in Úbeda for Cobos, on a project by Diego de Siloé, and designed the neighbouring palaces of Vázquez de Molina and of Dean Ortega.
In Baeza Vandelvira helped complete the cathedral. The 17th-century crisis ended the boom, and Úbeda still has 48 monuments and over a hundred other buildings, almost all Renaissance. This renewal was part of the introduction into Spain of humanist ideas from Italy, which went on to shape the architecture of Latin America. The two towns were inscribed in 2003.
Data: Wikidata (CC0). Photos: Wikimedia Commons, under each photo’s license. Prototype; may contain errors. We measure usage anonymously to improve the app (PostHog, EU).