Church of Nuestra Señora de las Nieves

The earliest information we have about the construction of the church can be found in the historical texts of 1495, although it is likely that it was already under construction years before when Íñigo López de Mendoza y Luna, Second Duke of the Infantado, changed the project of the New Castle to integrate the old parish church of the Virgin of the Nava into it. This decision made it necessary to build a new parish church, so both works were carried out at the same time by Juan Guas, who designed the South Gallery of the Castle, and by Lorenzo Vázquez de Segovia, the architect of the Great Cardinal Mendoza.

The Church of Nuestra Señora de las Nieves has a floor plan with three naves separated by arches. The chancel, covered with a superb, ribbed vault made with pieces of plaster imitating limestone, has the joints of its ribs decorated with paintings. It was designed by the brilliant Juan Guas in a very singular architectural exercise. At the foot of the church, the choir has been recently rebuilt with two of the four original columns it had. Its capitals are identical to those in the portico of the Town Hall, the work of Lorenzo Vázquez de Segovia. The tower, attached to the northwest corner, has three sections separated by cornices and the typical Isabelline-style Mendoza balls. There are two levels of openings for the bells with stone railings carved in the shape of a four-petal flower. The circular opening on the lower floor is interesting to see. It is decorated with a triskelion, although only the one on the south side is original.

The enlargement of the church to the south, documented in 1511, is more in line with Renaissance canons, incorporating the ashlar masonry in the sacristy and an arcaded atrium along the façade. In addition, the imposing semi-circular arches that separate the central nave from the aisles seem to have been added to the project when the chancel was already built, as they are too narrow. Powerful external buttresses were also added to the chancel and to the foot of the building to counteract the lateral thrusts of a risky project.

The church has suffered severe damages throughout its history, although the most important one was the fire that took place in 1769 during the festivities of the Virgin of the Peña Sacra. The tower, the baptistery chapel, the entire coffered ceiling, a large part of the images of worship and part of the archives were all burnt. Miraculously, the chancel, the sacristy and the main altarpiece were saved, although the latter was destroyed during the Civil War. Next to the ceiling of the portico and above the entrance door, there is a carved beam from the original coffered ceiling, the only one that survived the fire. The church was rebuilt and, after several centuries of maintenance difficulties, underwent a major restoration between 1969 and 1970. It was then when part of the interior cemetery and other elements such as the tombstones, the pulpit and the choir were lost. In 2012, the church finally recovered its original form and, currently, the choir houses an exhibition displaying various objects recovered during the restoration of the temple.

Outside, the garden, a former holy field, displays several 13th and 14th century discoid funerary stelae topped with Greek crosses in bas-relief, probably from burials in the original church next to the castle, which were moved to mark the boundaries of the holy ground of the new church and its cemetery.

Today, under the patronage of Nuestra Señora de las Nieves, the church represents the greatness of a temple of the town that was the head of the Real de Manzanares.