Monastery of San Antón

Three kilometers from the urban center are the ruins of what was the church of the general house of the order of San Antón for Castile, Portugal and America. Installed since 1146, they also founded a hospital to care for patients with ergotism or sacred fire that traveled the Camino de Santiago and was a reference throughout Europe for the cure of this disease. The monastery was abandoned after the suppression of the order at the end of the 18th century and the subsequent sale through the disentailment of Mendizábal, but not before moving its altarpieces to the church of San Juan de Castrojeriz where they are preserved to this day. At present, the ruins of the church, from the 14th century, and the atrium built in the 16th century remain. The best preserved is the magnificent central apse with two floors of pointed windows between powerful external buttresses, recalling the apse models of Las Huelgas de Burgos and Saint-Antoine-l'Abbaye, in Isère, mother house of the Antonian Order, under reconstruction in the mid-fourteenth century. It is considered a landmark on the road to Santiago and the gateway to Castrojeriz passing under its impressive atrium the Jacobean route and hosting inside the church a hostel for pilgrims that is maintained based on donations, thus continuing the hospital tradition of the extinct order of San Antón.