Torre de Sant Bartomeu, Baroque bell tower in Valencia, Spain
The Torre de Sant Bartomeu is a baroque bell tower in the heart of Valencia, located on the Plaza de Manises near the Serranos street. It is built with a stone base at the bottom and a red brick upper section topped by a double row of pilasters and a stone balustrade with corner pinnacles.
The tower originally belonged to one of Valencia's oldest churches, founded in 1239 after King Jaime I of Aragon took the city and granted the land to the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, on the site of a former mosque. The church was rebuilt in the 17th century and demolished in 1944, but the tower survived thanks to the intervention of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos.
The name Sant Bartomeu refers to Saint Bartholomew, to whom the original church was dedicated. The tower now stands alone on the Plaza de Manises, where it draws the attention of people passing through the old part of the city.
The tower stands on the Plaza de Manises and is easy to reach on foot from the surrounding streets of the city center. It can be viewed from the outside at any time, and guided tours offer the chance to get a closer look.
Beneath the tower lie the remains of a Roman round tower that was once part of the old city wall. The tower also began to lean over time, and the architect Juan Bautista Pérez Castiel stabilized it in 1684 by filling in the ground underneath.
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