Villalcazar de Sirga

Villalcázar de Sirga is a municipality in the province of Palencia, Castilla y León, situated on the Camino Frances in the Tierra de Campos plain. The village is defined almost entirely by the Church of Santa María la Blanca, a Templar-associated Gothic building of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries whose sheer scale is startling in the context of the small farming community it serves.

The church has massive stone walls, a fortress-like exterior, and a carved south portal of considerable quality. Inside, the tombs of the Infante Felipe, brother of Alfonso X the Wise, and his wife Leonor are notable examples of thirteenth-century royal funerary sculpture. Alfonso X praised the church in several of his Cantigas de Santa María.

For pilgrims, the scale and quality of Santa María la Blanca is one of the great architectural surprises of the Palencia stages, a cathedral-scale building standing alone in the wheat plain.