Iglesia Parroquial de la Encarnación - Bailén
The church was inaugurated on November 16, 1504, by the Bishop of Jáen, Don Alonso Suárez de la Fuente del Sauce, an event attended by the Counts of Bailén; Don Rodrigo Ponce de León and Doña Blanca Sandoval. Architecturally, it is considered the most emblematic local building, made of red sandstone cut into ashlars. Construction of the church began in the fifteenth century following the Catholic Kings or Elizabethan style, corresponding with the trends set by other churches in the province. The solid buttresses of multi-linear molding stand out on the exterior, together with the octagonal tower culminated by a conical ornament on a quadrangular body of smaller bells. Hidden in the basement of the church are sixteenth-century catacombs, an old cemetery, and a site believed to be the tomb of the heroine of Bailén, María Bellido. As a result of the Spanish Civil War, the church burnt down. In 1959, a new altarpiece in sandstone and limestone was erected. An image of the Patron, the Virgen de Zocueca, is accompanied by a seventeenth-century sculpture of San Dimas, which has long been attributed to the Alonso Cano School. The Mausoleum, containing the remains of General Don Francisco Castaños y Aragorri, Duke of Bailén and Marqués de Portugalete, has sat in the church since 1963, when it was transferred to Bailén from the Pantheon of Illustrious Men in Madrid. Declared a Historic-Artistic Monument on May 2, 1983.
Location
Located on Calle García Lorca.