Las Huelgas in Castile

The royal abbey of Las Huelgas in Spain was founded in 1187, at the request of Eleanor of England, wife of Alfonso VIII, king of Castile, and daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II. Although richly endowed -- Alfono, a pious man, was always generous to the Church -- its nuns belonged to the strict and ascetic Cistercian order, and were almost totally cut off from the world.

They were drawn only from the highest ranks of the Spanish aristocracy. The first abbess was a princess of Aragon; the second, from 1205 to 1218, was Princess Constance, one of Eleanor and Alfonso's daughers. The king and queen and their immediate entourage were allowed to visit the whole of the abbey on only one day in every year. On all other occasions, they were restricted to the choir and transepts, which they used as a royal chapel, looking through a small glass window into the nave where the nuns, their daughter among them, were at prayer.

Las Huelgas was not just a haven for noble ladies with strong religious convictions. It was also to be the royal mausoleum or burial place for Eleanor and Alfonso, in the tradition of Henry I's Reading Abbey and Stephen's Faversham. A beautiful building, with the elegance befitting a royal nunnery, Las Huelgas mainly reflects the influence of the Ile de France. But one feature is purely Plantagenet in style: the vaulting -- domed, with small additional compartments

and ribs -- of the transept chapels. These are identical to a group of vaults, known as Angevin vaults, that were built in and around Angers in the early 13th century. It seems certain that Eleanor of England or her daughter, Abbess Constance, brought an architect from Angers to leave a Plantagenet imprint on the abbey that was so much their own in a foreign land.

   Above The cloisters of Law Huelgas

   Below The tomb of Alfonso VIII and Eleanor