Villaviciosa Castle, Villaviciosa, Spain

The Castle of Villaviciosa was built in two different stages. In the 15th century, Nuño González del Águila y Guzmán ordered to build a castle to control the passage from the Amblés Valley to the Sierra de la Paramera. In the 16th century, the execution of the Torre de las Damas was carried out. Currently, Villaviciosa Castle is a hotel.

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santiago bettosini (12 months ago)

Manuel Esteban (12 months ago)

Sara Martín Bonilla (13 months ago)

Miguel Angel_61 (2 years ago)
Espectacular. Visita muy recomendable. Rodeado de zonas verdes y senderos naturales

Prado Matamoros (2 years ago)
Es la edificación más antigua de Villaviciosa, de principios del siglo XV, época de los Reyes Católicos. Y también la más querida. Actualmente pertenece al Archivo del Ejército del Aire, pero afortunadamente se está abriendo al público cada vez más para poder visitarlo. También se organizan en su Patio de Armas Conciertos de Música Clásica durante los veranos. Esperamos que se extienda también a más épocas del año.

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Photo from Flickr, copyright Inna_Zyu

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Kalozha Church

The Kalozha church of Saints Boris and Gleb is the oldest extant structure in Hrodna. It is the only surviving monument of ancient Black Ruthenian architecture, distinguished from other Orthodox churches by prolific use of polychrome faceted stones of blue, green or red tint which could be arranged to form crosses or other figures on the wall.

The church is a cross-domed building supported by six circular pillars. The outside is articulated with projecting pilasters, which have rounded corners, as does the building itself. The ante-nave contains the choir loft, accessed by a narrow gradatory in the western wall. Two other stairs were discovered in the walls of the side apses; their purpose is not clear. The floor is lined with ceramic tiles forming decorative patterns. The interior was lined with innumerable built-in pitchers, which usually serve in Eastern Orthodox churches as resonators but in this case were scored to produce decorative effects. For this reason, the central nave has never been painted.

The church was built before 1183 and survived intact, depicted in the 1840s by Michał Kulesza, until 1853, when the south wall collapsed, due to its perilous location on the high bank of the Neman. During restoration works, some fragments of 12th-century frescoes were discovered in the apses. Remains of four other churches in the same style, decorated with pitchers and coloured stones instead of frescoes, were discovered in Hrodna and Vaŭkavysk. They all date back to the turn of the 13th century, as do remains of the first stone palace in the Old Hrodna Castle.

In 2004, the church was included in the Tentative List of UNESCO"s World Heritage Sites.

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Villaviciosa Castle

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