Located in the northern part of the population, at the beginning of it.

The Former Convent of Santo Domingo, in La Guardia de Jaén, is one of the most distinctive landmarks of the Renaissance of the South. Declared a Historical Monument in 1975, it preserves the former conventual church — today the Parish of the Assumption —, part of the cloister, and the remains of the conventual palace, forming an ensemble of great historical and artistic interest.

Founded in the 16th century by Don Rodrigo Messía Carrillo and Doña Mayor de Fonseca, lords of La Guardia with ties to Salamanca, the Dominican convent began construction in 1538. From 1542 onwards, the work took on a new dimension with the involvement of Andrés de Vandelvira, one of the great masters of the Andalusian Renaissance, who introduced innovative architectural solutions in the main chapel and the transept.

The main chapel, with its octagonal floor plan, follows models found in Alonso de Vandelvira's Libro de las Traças (Book of Designs) and is structured through a carefully applied Classical order. The transept is covered by a domed vault with a lantern, resting on four corner piers, creating a space of great balance and clarity. Inside, a remarkable iconographic programme is preserved, with coffered ceilings decorated with Dominican saints, prophets and apostles, as well as reliefs by Juan de Reolid depicting the Passion and Resurrection of Christ.

The ensemble reflects the dialogue between Castilian influences — stemming from the Salamanca background of its founders — and the mastery of the Jaén Renaissance, in collaboration with other stonemasons such as Domingo de Tolosa and Francisco del Castillo. Despite the transformations brought about by the disentailment (desamortización) and its later uses, the former convent still retains Renaissance coffered ceilings, remains of mural painting, a sacristy with a 1547 wooden ceiling (alfarje), and an 18th-century black jasper washbasin.

The Former Convent of Santo Domingo is today part of the Renaissance of the South Route, standing as an outstanding example of religious architecture linked to the figure of Vandelvira and to the artistic splendour of the 16th century in the province of Jaén.

Calle Escuelas, 11. 23170, La Guardia de Jaén 
Information and bookings
953 32 71 00

From 1835, with the arrival of the deamortizations, it passed into private hands and became houses and oil factory. The original facade was modified in the 20th century with the construction of a double-step artistic and large windows. From the interior, only the basic structure of the church is maintained, which consists of a single ship with side chapels and a lobby at the feet.

It currently houses the Historical Archive and the Public Library.

Among the Caserio de Larva is the old Town Hall, located in an altozano, with narrow walls, large symmetrical and verticalized voids, adapted to the slight level of heights of the street, and which is distinguished from the typology of the houses surrounding it by a prismatic, higher fronton, which hosts a watch and a small bell, following the model of the consistory houses of the illustrated colonization.

Own building of the late 19th and early 20th century.

As the original building was larger than the space it was going to occupy, the solution was to "fold" the ends and fold them on the sides. The building consists of two bodies. In the first body there is a door and three windows, to the right we find the shield of the corridor, and to the left that of the city. The second body is formed by a lookout with square pillars interrupted in the center by the shield of Charles V.

The butcher's shop had a slaughterhouse on the ground floor and a sale on the top. Its uses have varied over time: municipal slaughterhouse, skin dryer, municipal archive, museum etc. It is currently the seat of the courts.

We highlight the source that is located in the centre of the village, where you can reach a track in good condition that leaves south from Collado Mahón (on the road from Torres de Albanchez to Villarrodrigo). The source of the work and with two years pours to two semicircular pillars. The water is the toima of a spring in an olive grove about 300 m south-west.

In Hornos de Peal, one of the pedanias of Peal de Becerro, is still in operation an old aqueduct, which has been built by Roman, which continues to challenge the passage of time and that of a river that crosses it below by deteriorating it.