Former Convent of Santa María de la Encarnación

Currently restored, it is a beautiful building for cultural uses that houses the Antonio Reyna Manescau Center and other permanent exhibition rooms.

The convent cloister is on two floors and has four irregular sides formed by semicircular brick arches. This architectural complex includes two more smaller courtyards located on other levels of the building.

The church rises above the space occupied by the old aljama mosque, converted into a Catholic temple in 1485 after the capture of Coín, thus being the first parish church in the town. It owes its name to the devotion of Queen Isabel the Catholic for the Marian dedication of Santa María de la Encarnación. In the 18th century, it was granted to some pious women in order to found the convent-monastery and orphanage for girls. Later this community joined the order of the Poor Clares, who occupied the building until the 1980s.

The complex was rehabilitated in the last decade of the 20th century, significantly changing parts of the original work.

The interior of the temple is structured in two naves, in the main one is the apse with a dome decorated with plasterwork in the 18th century Baroque style. At the foot of the main nave stands the singular high choir built at the end of the 18th century by the Poor Clare sisters. Today it is sheltered by a wooden lattice, supported on a wavy flight, where the barrel vault with lunettes and three trefoil arches on its sides stand out, giving the whole an unquestionable Baroque flavor.

The bell tower, built in the first third of the 16th century, is located at the southeast end of the church, and has also been used as a sacristy since its origins. It has a square plan and its exterior elevation is made up of two bodies, the first of them solid and the upper one with the openings for the bell tower.