What to See in Aguilar de Campoo - Top Sights and Attractions

The convent of Santa Clara de Aguilar is a monastery located on the right bank of the river Pisuerga as it passes through the town of Aguilar de Campoo, whose architectural traces represent the characteristic simplicity of the artistic expression of the Order of Santa Clara. It was originally a Franciscan convent founded in the 15th century by Juan Fernández Manrique de Lara, which was occupied by Poor Clare nuns from the convent of Porquera de los Infantes in 1436. With the sole exception of the period of the War of Independence, the Sisters of the Poor of Santa Clara have been inhabiting the convent since then, taking care of its maintenance so that the current state of conservation is good.

The structure of the built complex is typical of Franciscan monasteries, the rule to which the Poor Clares belong: a large walled enclosure inside which are the vegetable garden, the workshop, the kitchen, the dining room or refectory, the church, the cloister, the library and the chapter rooms. The temple has a single nave divided into four ribbed vaults, with a rectangular presbytery. In the interior there is a 13th century polychrome seated Virgin and a 14th century wooden Christ, as well as the grille and the altarpieces. In the ribbed keystones the arms of the house of Rojas are carved. The rest of the rooms are built with 18th century masonry. The cloister has two floors, the lower one with semicircular arcades on rectangular pillars topped by capitals with nacelle. The ceilings are coffered.

In 1991 it was declared of cultural interest.

The Puerta de Reinosa is one of the access gates to the town of Aguilar de Campoo through the medieval wall that surrounded the town and that still persists. This gate opens to the NW, in the direction of the old road that connected the Meseta and Aguilar with Reinosa and the Cantabrian coast.

It is formed by an ogival or pointed arch from the late medieval period, on which is displayed a shield carved in stone with the eagle of the town's coat of arms. Below it and on the keystone, we can see an inscription engraved in Spanish and Hebrew with the 10th verse of the 35th chapter of Isaiah, which indicates the date of construction of the arch, 1381 being King of Castile Henry II and master builder Don Çak Zalemek, son of Don Salomon Zamelek and Doña Bellida, his wife. This suggests that this door gave immediate access to the Jewish quarter of Aguilar, whose inhabitants would be responsible for the conservation of the wall.