Santa María de la Vega, Renedo de la Vega
Santa María de la Vega comprises the remains of a monastery in La Serna, Palencia, originally built in the 13th century as a three-nave brick church with side chapels and a cloister. Parts of the original church, including the central apse and portions of the cloister, survive today amid overgrown surroundings.
Rodrigo Rodríguez Girón and his wife Inés Pérez founded the monastery in 1215, donating it to the Cistercian order with plans to be buried there. Renovations occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries, but in the early 1800s, damage during the independence war left the complex abandoned and in ruins.
The monastery was built with mudéjar and early Gothic architectural elements, featuring a three-nave basilica with side chapels. The structure reflects regional building techniques that monks and craftspeople employed during medieval times.
The site is accessible from outside, though the grounds are privately owned and partially in ruins. The remains sit beside a minor road in open, flat countryside that is easy to explore on foot.
Funerary monuments originally erected at this site for the founding family were later moved to New York and housed in a museum there. This dispersal of relics shows how the history of this place became scattered across distant locations.
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