A few weeks ago, I was amazed by this seemly unimportant almost empty monastery of Uclés. Not for it's rich history, elaborated construction or great location, but by an arch. The Monastery de Santiago de Uclés is located town of Uclés in Castile-La Mancha (Spain). It was built by the Order of Santiago, whose main headquarters were in that town.
The monastery, declared National Monument in 1931, rises on a hill west of the village. It's part of a large complex of buildings from different historical periods.
Construction was carried out over a long period of time, so the monastery exhibits three architectural styles: Plateresque, Herrerian and Churrigueresque. The east wing of the monastery, from the first half of the 16th century, was executed in Plateresque style. The Herrerian style church in the north wing was completed in 1602. The rest of the monastery, built in the 17th century, is of Baroque style, and culminates with its Churrigueresque facade. Let's talk about The Arch. In my opinion, is the most interesting piece of this monastery. An arch that you can mistake for a regular one, unless you really pay attention. It's located at the ending of the main staircase, which allows access to the second floor. It was built in XVII.
The outside part of the patio needed to be perfectly symmetrical for maintaining the style, and this provoke the arch to be very slim. This was a problem, because the main stairs will be slim too if the proportion of the arch was applied to them. In order to make the stairs big enough, the arch is designed diagonally, to gain wight as it goes into the other room. This made the arch seemingly normal from outside, identical to the rest. When looked from the inside, thus, it can be seen that the left side when entering from the patio is diagonal. This allowed the stairs to be perfectly aligned to the door and big enough.
In this video you can appreciate the stunning beauty of this historical building.
Image credits. Wikipedia
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