Church in Ubeda
Partly free, partly paidSome of it costs nothing, some of it charges.
Masterpiece of Spanish Renaissance architecture and the great anchor of Ubeda’s Plaza Vazquez de Molina, built as the private funerary chapel of Francisco de los Cobos and designed by Diego de Siloé and Andrés de Vandelvira. The celebrated carved facade is free to admire from the square; only the interior charges a small fee, so the most famous part costs nothing.
The chapel faces straight onto the Plaza Vazquez de Molina, alongside the parador-run Palace of Dean Ortega, and its elaborate facade is the most photographed thing in Ubeda. Studying it from the open square costs nothing, and only stepping inside asks a small fee. Pair it with the rest of Ubeda and nearby Baeza for a low-cost Renaissance day reached from Jaen. Come in spring or autumn for milder weather, since the inland summer gets brutally hot.
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Other places worth the walk, and what each one costs.
Gothic and Renaissance collegiate church raised over Ubeda's former main mosque, anchoring one end of the Plaza Vazquez de Molina alongside the Sacra Capilla del Salvador and the Palace of Dean Ortega. The interior and cloister charge a small entry fee, but the square outside and the church facade cost nothing to admire.
A Plateresque palace in Ubeda with a grand double-towered facade, one of the most ornate civil frontages in the town's Renaissance old town. The building now houses the local School of Art, and the facade is free to admire from the street. The interior courtyard is often accessible during school hours at no charge.
The Church of San Lorenzo is one of Ubeda's most unusual monuments: a 13th-century church-fortress built straight onto the Almohad city wall, so its south side doubles as a stretch of the old defences and its wall walkway, the adarve, opens out as a balcony over the Guadalquivir valley and the olive groves below.
The Church of San Pablo is one of the oldest churches in Ubeda, with origins reaching back to the Visigothic period and a long history of rebuilding that left it layered in Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance work.
Freestanding Renaissance clock tower on Plaza de Andalucia in Ubeda, marking the boundary between the old and new town. Free to see and a handy orientation point: from here the monumental Renaissance quarter around Plaza Vazquez de Molina is a short walk south, so it costs nothing to use the tower as the spot where a budget walking route through the old
One of the surviving medieval gates in Ubeda's old walls, opening toward the south and the road to Granada. Free to walk up to at any hour, it marks where the city once faced the Reconquista frontier. A quick, no-cost stop on the way to or from the Renaissance core around Plaza Vazquez de Molina.
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The whole of Ubeda