Villanueva de Sigena (Villanueva de Sigena)
The Royal Monastery of Santa María de Sigena is located on the outskirts of town. Mount Sigena is a hill of the Sierra de Alcubierre located 5 km to the south.
Villanueva de Sigena is the birthplace of the physician and heterodox theologian, Michael Servetus (1511?–1553). Servetus was the discoverer of pulmonary circulation. A museum and interpretation center, maintained by the Michael Servetus Institute, is now located in the original house were Servetus was born.
Nearby there is the original settlement, based round the partially ruined, and once wealthy and aristocratic Romanesque convent of Santa María la Real de Sijena, founded in 1183 by Sancha of Castile, Queen of Aragon. This was largely destroyed by fire in 1936 by anti-clerical Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. It is now in the process of restoration, and has been reoccupied by nuns since 1985. Several royal burials were made in the convent church, including Sancha, who died there, her son Pedro II of Aragon and two of his sisters.
The chapter house housed extremely important Romanesque frescos of about 1200 by largely English artists, probably including some of those who produced the Winchester Bible; this was only realized after their destruction. The artists also appear to have visited Palermo before Sigena, as some influence from mosaics there can be seen. The frescos had been fully photographed in black and white shortly before their destruction, and the remaining damaged sections, mostly having lost their colour, are in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya in Barcelona.
* Monegros
* Monastery of Santa María de Sigena
* List of municipalities in Zaragoza
Map - Villanueva de Sigena (Villanueva de Sigena)
Map
Country - Spain
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Anatomically modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 42,000 years ago. The ancient Iberian and Celtic tribes, along with other pre-Roman peoples, dwelled the territory maintaining contacts with foreign Mediterranean cultures. The Roman conquest and colonization of the peninsula (Hispania) ensued, bringing the Romanization of the population. Receding of Western Roman imperial authority ushered in the migration of different non-Roman peoples from Central and Northern Europe with the Visigoths as the dominant power in the peninsula by the fifth century. In the early eighth century, most of the peninsula was conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate, and during early Islamic rule, Al-Andalus became a dominant peninsular power centered in Córdoba. Several Christian kingdoms emerged in Northern Iberia, chief among them León, Castile, Aragon, Portugal, and Navarre made an intermittent southward military expansion, known as Reconquista, repelling the Islamic rule in Iberia, which culminated with the Christian seizure of the Emirate of Granada in 1492. Jews and Muslims were forced to choose between conversion to Catholicism or expulsion, and eventually the converts were expelled through different royal decrees.
Currency / Language
ISO | Currency | Symbol | Significant figures |
---|---|---|---|
EUR | Euro | € | 2 |
ISO | Language |
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EU | Basque language |
CA | Catalan language |
GL | Galician language |
OC | Occitan language |
ES | Spanish language |