Church of Saint John of the Kings

It is a Toledo symbolic building that has grown at the same time as the town, having its oldest origins in Roman times. It is located on a hill, being its location an important strategic point, developing different functions through the years.

It has a square floor and a central courtyard also square with angular towers.

The facade shows its great horizontality, with three bodies, that are finished off by a balustrade. The reconstruction of the Alcázar has changed the original apparence of the building in a necessary way and this fact is reflected in its four facades, belonging each of them to a different architectural style. One of them is Renaissance, another one is Plateresque, the Western one is Medieval with large fortified towers and battlemented defence, and the Southern one is Churrigueresque, erected according to Juan de Herrera´ s design.

It was Carlos V´ s royal residence and became a state prison in 1643. It was tranfered to the cardinal Lorenzana by Carlos III.

After the reform that he entrusted to the architect Ventura Rodríguez, its rooms became the head office of the Royal Charity. In the central courtyard stands a copy of the sculpture of Carlos V by Leoni. At the bottom of this courtyard there is a beautiful staircase by Herrera Villalpando.

Nowadays it houses the headquarters of the Museo del Ejército (Museum of Army), where you can find different types of arms, objects and military documents from different times, collections of tin soldiers or the scale model of the appearance in ruins of the Alcazar after the Civil War.

It seems that it was founded in the VI Century by San Eugenio, the first bishop of Toledo. The Muslim invasion turned it into a mosque, called La Mayor.

When Toledo was reconquered by Alfonso VI, it became cathedral. Later, San Fernando ordered to demolish it and ordered to place the first stone of the current one in 1227.It has five naves supported by 88 huge pillars, and transept, finished off by the apse with a marvellous double ambulatory, that is a continuation of the side naves.

More than 750 artistic stained- glass windows, from the XV and XVI Centuries, give a great beauty and fantastic brightness to the interior. Outside, five monumental doors and three secondary ones give access to the great basilica.

However, the most amazing element that we should highlight because of its grandness and art is the altarpiece of the Major Chapel, by Rodrigo Alemán, Vigarni, Egas and Pedro Gumiel. It consists of five bodies with scenes of the New Testament with real size polychrome sculptures and is worked with flame- gilded wood. It was commissioned by the Cardinal Cisneros between 1497 and 1504.

The Chapel of St James, from the XV Century, is in a Flamboyant style and houses the sarcophagus of the High Constable Álvaro de Luna and his wife, Juana de Pimentel.

The higher choir consists of seventy two chairs by Alonso de Berruguete and Felipe Vigarni, from Burgundy, in 1540. The higher part is occupied by Christ´ genealogies according to the gospels; the lower part is occupied by the characters of the Old alliance with the characters of the New one and the Saints of the Church.

Its grille was carried out by Domingo de Céspedes. The space that gives access to the sacristy is the entrance to a real museum with works of artists as known as Jordan, Caxés and Ricci. In the sacristy we can see an interesting collection of pictures. In the central altar is located El Expolio by El Greco, among other paintings by Bellini, Bassano or Goya.

We should also pay special attention to the room “El Ochavo”, a sumptuous space from the end of the XVI Century, with octagonal floor, that is part of the cathedral “sacred” or “sacrarium”. It houses an interesting collection of pieces such as San Luis´ Reliquary and busts of San Juan Bautista or la Cruz and the cardinal Mendoza.

This building was founded by the Cardinal Pedro González de Mendoza at the beginning of the XVI Century with the aim of taking in orphans. It is located in the former Santa Cruz Hospital, a Renaissance building with a Plateresque façade, a cloister and a palace staircase, by Covarrubias, as well as Mudejar and Renaissance coffered ceilings.

Today, it has become a museum with sections of Fine Arts, Archaeology and Decorative Arts. In the wide galleries of this building are shown several paintings of El Greco, such as “The Assumption of the Virgin” and other important pieces of Visigothic Art, such as graves or altars. In this way, this museum is used for important thematic exhibitions. It is considered as one of the best “Provincial Museums” in Spain.

It was built by the Marqués de la Vega Inclán, over the foundations of a Renaissance palace located in the Toledo Jewish quarter.

It consists of two buildings: a house with courtyard from the XVI Century and an enlargement from the beginning of the XX Century which causes a garden.

This house-museum was not the authentic residence of El Greco, it faithfully reproduces a Toledo´ s mansion from the XVI Century; its furniture and artistic objects enrich and decorate it and together with the building structure, evoke the housing of that time. Inside, we can see objects and scenaries of that time such as twenty of his best known paintings which almost all of them belong to his last period of artistic activity, between 1600 and 1614, such as “Vista general de Toledo” or “Apostolado”, except for the splendid version of “Lagrimas de San Pedro” from the XVI Century in the upper floor, and other contemporary authors from the Toledo School, the Madrid School and Seville School from the XVII Century, in the ground floor.