Saint Paul's Church and Convent

The parish church of Saint Paul in Palencia was the temple of a prominent Dominican convent that, according to tradition, constituted the second ecclesiastical foundation of Santo Domingo de Guzmán after the Convent of Santa Cruz in Segovia. This was his way to recognize the favor and influence of a city in which he had studied and professed his vows. Of the original spaces of that primitive thirteenth-century convent, witness to the Cortes Generales de Castilla on three occasions and seat of General Studies in the sixteenth century, there is no trace, however: during the French invasion it was used as a barracks by Napoleonic troops. The confiscations of the 1830s meant, soon after, the eviction of the monastery and its subsequent ruin and oblivion. The current church was built between the 14th and 16th centuries and has two doors, one of them from the 15th century and the other, more modern (neoclassical), from the 18th. Inside, a magnificent “La Piedad” altarpiece stands out, presiding over the chapel in which Dean Zapata is buried, as well as the Renaissance tombs of the Marquises of Poza, located on both sides of the Main Chapel, with praying statues, grills, chairs and paintings. The church was declared a National Historic-Artistic Monument in 1931.