Iglesia de San Pedro Mártir

Iglesia de San Pedro Mártir preserves the outer walls and slender pointed arches of a hospital church in Spain. Stone textures, open gaps and surviving masonry show a ruin rather than a restored façade.

The hospital complex grew around 1490 through Inés Chemida’s donations and care, serving illnesses introduced after the conquest. Its church supported patients’ spiritual needs, while the wider site later became a military quarter, private property and municipal space. Economic decline closed the hospital in the nineteenth century, and demolition in the mid-twentieth century left the church ruins standing. Archaeological work recovered ceramic fragments and human bones, while Inés Chemida’s burial remains beneath the floor. Cultural programmes and exhibitions now occupy the surviving fabric, linking care in the past with civic life today.

In 1981, the remains became a protected historic monument. Look closely at one pointed arch and imagine voices moving beneath it.