Shrine of San Pelayo

This simple country shrine, a lovely example of the earliest Romanesque style, also features various elements which are original in the region.

The church is small in size and has one nave (later rebuilt with cement and masonry work) with a wooden roof, and a delightful and unexpected semicircular apse built using expertly carved ashlar stones. On the exterior it is divided into five segments by means of four semicircular adjoining columns. The unexpected elements include a frieze-cornice decorated in equal parts with the chessboard design known as ajedrezado jaqués and, surprisingly, an arcade of blocked arches typical of the Romanesque-Lombard style typical of the distant churches of the eastern Pyrenees. The simple doorway –a cambered semicircular arch supported by two columns with archaic capitals with a Mozarabic inspiration– gives way to the second of the surprises concealed by this shrine: the only remnants of Romanesque mural painting (12th century) in the whole of the region of Castile La Vieja.