The Iglesia de San Pablo is a Dominican convent church in the Axerquía, founded in the first wave of Ferdinand III's conquest of Córdoba and still run as a working parish. It is a Romanesque-Gothic building with Cistercian influence, with a painted timber ceiling over the nave, a Gothic chapel for the Virgin of the Rosary and a Baroque street portal dated 1708. It is one of seven Fernandine churches on the Mezquita-Catedral's visiting route, and the one that sits right next to the Palacio de Orive.
A Dominican foundation on layered ground
The Dominicans obtained permission to found a convent here in 1236, and a royal document of 1241 confirmed it by donating the land. The convent was one of five founded together in the first phase of the conquest, and it was placed under St Paul because he was the saint of the day Córdoba fell. The ground had already been used before: the site was first the Roman circus of Córdoba, then an Almohad palace, and only then a Christian convent.
The church itself went up in the last third of the 13th century and the first third of the 14th, was altered in the 15th and received Baroque changes in the 18th. The Junta de Andalucía's heritage guide describes it as built over Roman and Almohad structures. A restoration between 1897 and 1903 tried to return the building to its original appearance as far as possible. In 1904 the Claretian fathers took over the church, and it has functioned as a regular parish ever since.
Use your Mezquita ticket
The Fernandine Churches Route is free with a Mezquita-Catedral entrance, so if you have already paid for the cathedral you do not need the separate €6 route ticket. Check the route page for the season's hours, as none are published for San Pablo alone.
What to look for inside
The plan is basilican: three naves without a transept, the central one wider than the aisles, with a narthex and four bays ending in apses. Look up in the central nave. The roof is a painted timber par y nudillo ceiling decorated with interlaced lacework and held together by iron tie-rods.
The features worth your time:
- The Rosary chapel and camarín. The chapel is a square Gothic space with ribbed vaulting; the camarín behind it is Baroque, with a polygonal vault.
- The 1708 portal. The Baroque doorway on Calle Capitulares carries a figure of St Paul with the date 1708 carved at his feet, so you can read the year off the stone.
- A medieval writer's tomb. Leonor López de Córdoba, a 14th-century Castilian author and a pioneer of the memoir, is buried in the Rosary chapel.
- The carillon. The bell carillon was bought by Father Pueyo at the 1900 Paris Exposition and is one of very few of its kind in Spain.
Juan de Mesa's Nuestra Señora de las Angustias (1627) was kept here from the 1960s until it went back to its historic home in the church of San Agustín on 14 March 2014, so do not come looking for it.
