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A walk by the history of Albocàsser
It is a very comfortable tour that explores the treasures of the town’s heritage, and also serves to explore various picturesque and unique corners. We will start the route in Plaça de la Font, from the town’s laundry facilities. We will cross the old town through the characteristic Calle Mayor, until we pass the Town Hall and reach the Church of the Assumption. From there we will go into several interesting alleys to discover unique elements such as the Torre de la Fonteta or the Ermita del Calvario. Then we will leave the town to visit the Hermitage of San Pedro, after which we will return to the hermitage of the Saints Juanes, a jewel of the 13th century. From there we will end our tour with a short 3 km drive to the Sant Pau Hermitage, a monumental heritage site that invites rest and reflection and where we end this pleasant tour.
Distance: 1.5 km on foot plus 3.1 km by car
Time: 45 minutes
Elevation: 0 mts
Difficulty: easy
Laundry room
They are located in Plaça de la Font, one of the central areas of the town. They consist of two large stone vats with sloping edges to facilitate cleaning of clothes. They were built in 1912 and their importance is not only practical, but also has always exercised a strong function of social cohesion and a meeting point where women regularly shared their lives. In addition, they are still used by the inhabitants today.
Church of the Assumption
The parish church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción is the Albocácer parish church, located in the Plaza Mayor, where the Town Hall is also located. It is a severe baroque temple from the late 17th century that replaced the primitive Gothic temple and consists of three naves without a transept and side chapels, with half-barrel vaults with lunettes.
The façade is made of ashlar masonry with different elements carved in stone. The main door is located on the central portal and has a voussoir lintel flanked by four pilasters. The frieze is smooth but the cornice is decorated with denticles on the lower edge. The upper body of the church has a central niche framed by four other pilasters. The top of the façade consists of a frieze decorated with pinnacles and, in line with the central axis marked by the portal, there is a belfry as a crown. The bell tower, attached to the church, is also built in ashlar masonry.
The temple preserves a considerable number of pieces of goldwork, ornaments and remains of altars and the altarpiece of the Virgin of Hope, a beautiful example of international Gothic, from the hermitage of this devotion.
Torre de la Fonteta
The Torre de La Fonteta, also called the Torre or Torre de los Blanco, is located on Sant Pau street, and was built in the 16th century. It owes its name to the proximity to a fountain, on the old road to Valencia. It was a defensive tower for the adjacent orchards and the castle, from which it was free about 50 meters from it.
Previously, the tower belonged to the Fuster family, which had some relevant members such as the Archbishop of Sacer, Don Gaspar Fuster and Vidal; Don Manuel Fuster Membrado, writer and resident of Valencia, who was a first cousin of Archbishop Don Gaspar and Don Ramón de Pedro y Fuster, Knight Maestrante of Valencia and of the Flor de Lis of France, who was a well-known writer and genealogist.
Due to its construction, it is a tower with a square plan, although it was later expanded to have the current rectangular plan. The factory of the walls is of masonry with reinforcement of ashlars in the corners. The roof has a single slope surrounded by pinnacles like merlons on three of its fronts, so that the rear façade forms a small eaves on the roof.
The small entrance door has a large window on its left side with a wrought iron gate. There are more small windows on the upper floors, reflecting the successive extensions on the rear façade. In the primitive structure there is a gallery that finishes off the factory, in Renaissance style, which imitates the Catalan-Aragonese tradition from the 16th century.
Hermitage of Calvari
El Calvario de Albocàsser is located next to the last houses of the town in the Raval Alt neighborhood, in the northwestern part of the urban area. Of eighteenth-century origin, both the houses and the chapel were seriously damaged during the Civil War. The hermitage remained semi-ruined until the end of the last century, when Calvary and the temple were restored.
The wide area that surrounds it is surrounded by a brick wall and contains the Stations of the Cross (with Alcorina ceramic panels from 1945) escorted by cypress trees. Of the quadrangular temple, with high whitewashed walls, the façade of good quality carved ashlar and its dome stands out ula of tiles on drum. The interior is dominated by a carving of the Crucified Christ, made in 1939.
Hermitage of San Pere Mártir
The hermitage dedicated to Saint Peter of Verona is located about 500m from the town, on the old road to Benassal or Camí Vell de Sant Pau. The temple dates from the second half of the 15th century and had a sacristy added in the 18th century, which today has disappeared. In 1568 the bishop of Tortosa authorized sung masses to be celebrated there.
It is a small temple characterized by its parallel lateral portico open to that side and to the facade. This porch has a running bench and inside wooden tables with benches have been arranged, as well as outside, where there is a small recreational area. The door opens in a semicircular arch with elegant voussoirs. Above it, the cornice is topped by a brick steeple with a bell. The interior (restored in 1994) is a small rectangular single nave with a flat wooden roof supported by corbels. It presided over an altarpiece with the image of the owner, lost during the Civil War, now replaced by another of modern invoice.
His festival is April 29, but Albocàsser celebrates it on the last Sunday of that month. It is an old tradition to visit the hermitage in pilgrimage that day, where the rosemary is blessed, which is then arranged by forming crosses in the fields in request of good harvests.
Hermitage Santos Juanes
Also known as Hermitage of San Juan, it is dedicated to San Juan Bautista and San Juan Evangelista, this hermitage was built outside the town walls, although with subsequent development it has been surrounded by modern dwellings.
It was ordered to be built at the end of the 13th century by the founder of the town, Joan Brusca. Its exterior simplicity does not hide its historical value. The floor plan is rectangular, covered with gabled tiles and truncated by a belfry for the bell, a much later addition. The facade shows masonry and ashlars in the corners. The main door, under stone corbels, is round with voussoirs showing carved anthropomorphic motifs. There is a side door of a similar invoice but without any decoration.
It has a single nave with a wooden roof supported by pointed arches supported by pilasters with capitals and divided into five small sections. A narrow loophole opens at the head of the apse and another on the side of the epistle. The temple preserves several jewels: the stone sarcophagus of Joan Brusca, some Gothic panels and, above all, the valuable altarpiece dedicated to the Santos Juanes made by Pere Lembrí at the beginning of the 15th century.
Hermitage of Sant Pau
The hermitage dedicated to Saint Paul the Apostle is the most important in the town and one of the best known and most visited in the region. It is located about 3 km from Albocàsser, at the crossroads between the CV-15 to Castellón and the CV-166 to La Torre d’En Bessora and Culla. Historically, it was a busy crossroads and forced passage of cattle herds, which made it a place that facilitated its fame as a sanctuary.
The discovery of Roman remains has supported the legend of the alleged stay of the apostle in these lands, although without any historical foundation. More popular is the tradition that relates that in the seventeenth century the saint appeared in this place to some crippled men who bathed in a muddy pool; His miraculous intervention made the murky waters clean and the sick healthy.
As a result of the miracle the church was built, completed in the early 17th century. In 1687 it was profoundly renovated and in 1690 the painter Vicent Gulló decorated its interior. The works of the inn, meanwhile, were completed in 1617 although in the 18th century it was expanded with two side porch rooms. The hermitage acquired great fame, being visited by famous people and receiving numerous privileges. During the Civil War it suffered serious damage and entered a time of neglect, until at the end of the last century a deep restoration was undertaken. It was declared a National Historic-Artistic Monument in 1979.
The sanctuary is located in a beautiful place, in the shade of leafy trees and forming a remarkable architectural complex. Through an arcade covered by an old ivy we enter the wide esplanade that delimits the church, the adjoining guesthouse and two porticoed lateral bodies. In the middle is the well whose waters San Pablo purified, according to legend. The annexed units have corrals and stables for the horses and large rooms for visitors. On the upper floor there is a room decorated with biblical scenes and scenes from the life of Saint Paul, in a curious monochrome technique that tradition attributes to some mysterious pilgrims who performed them in a single night, although they could be the work of Vicent Gulló himself. In the hostel, the Gothic-Catalan staircases, the coffered ceilings and the interior patio with a projecting wooden eaves are also interesting.
Despite the grandeur of the complex, the Hermitage is a small temple with a masonry factory and ashlar reinforcements. In its simple façade there is a further belfry, the round oculus in the pediment and the Romanesque door with large voussoirs and an empty niche.
Its interior has a single nave without side chapels and a ribbed vault whose ribs are supported by corbels decorated with reliefs. It has a high choir at the feet with a wooden railing and a pulpit dated 1608. The jewel of the chapel is the presbytery, profusely decorated with the paintings made by the master from Vinaròs Vicente Guilló between 1687 and 1690. These frescoes represent, with great color , scenes from the life of Saint Paul. The hermitage kept a relic of the bones of Saint Paul in a valuable reliquary, disappeared in the Civil War and replaced by another from his tomb.
Albocàsser celebrates pilgrimage to Sant Pau on the third day of Pentecost Easter, with mass in the hermitage, food in the place and popular dances. The residents of La Torre d’En Bessora make a pilgrimage on the Wednesday before Easter, and in the past the sailors of Vinaròs did too. Another big day is June 29, when the surrounding land serves as the stage for an annual cattle fair, a well-known regional event of the past and which still attracts many visitors.
