Church of Santa Isabel de los Ángeles

On the steep “Cuesta de las Monjas”, Calle Ramón y Cajal, in Villacarrillo we find the Church of Santa Isabel de los Ángeles. The building adjoining the church was a cloistered convent until 1737, a public prison during the French occupation and, after 1884, the hospital that the services of the old Hospital of San Lorenzo were moved to. Today it houses various municipal buildings.

It appears that construction began on it around 1576, and the details and style place it at the end of the 16th century and start of the 17th. The layout is a single nave (hall church) with a high choir at the end and the ceiling is barrel-vaulted. The pendentives of the dome have frescoes attributed to the Villacarrillo artist Escudero de la Torre. The gold altarpiece has Solomonic columns from the 18th century.

The façade is stone with uneven ashlar work and a simple belfry in three sections which stands in the northwest corner of it. The entrance, attributed to the architect Juan de Aranda y Salazar (the main contractor for Jaén Cathedral and successor of Vandelvira), brims over with elegant classicism with a niche containing the stone image of Santa Isabel, patron saint of the church.

In this church, on 25 August 1812, the solemn act of swearing in the new Cadiz Constitution, “La Pepa” took place.