Religious architecture
SAN ANDRÉS CHURCH
The Parish church is dedicated to the Patron´s saint, San Andres. It was built between 1539 and 1728 in three steps, with several styles that go from the late gothic to the Barroc.
It is made of ashlar stone and shares two access. The main one is in the occidental façade, has wide pillow pilasters and was built in 1665 by Tomás y Sebastián Agüero. In the upper part there is a niche with the image of San Andrés , made in 1693. In the south part, you find the “Puerta de San Miguel” that nowadays is boarded up. It belongs to the first stage of the building of the temple.
In the south area is the “Puerta de San Miguel”, which currently remains covered. It belongs to the first stage of temple construction and was built with fluted columns above high prismatic basements. It has a relief under a triangular pediment with an image of San Miguel, which some date in the 17th century.
The work as a whole is rectangular in shape with three sections and a half hexagon headboard. The buttresses appear very protruding and covered by a starry vault. It also has a tower of two bodies and square plan. It is covered with a stepped pyramid of stone, which was completed in 1690 by Juan Gómez de Barcena and his son Marcos.
The main altarpiece belongs to the Renaissance. Its construction denotes a great austerity and balance. It has a niche with semicircular arches and framed panels. The columns are of Ionic and Corinthian style. The bancal is low and on it are placed five floors, with four streets the lower ones, and three the upper one. With the shrine, the work of Juan de Alvarado in 1579, the most attractive element of the altarpiece was made. The set was completed by Juan de Alvarado and Juan Gómez de Barcena in 1594.
In the Cruise there are two other Baroque altarpieces with Solomonic columns and Corinthian capitals dedicated to St. Peter on the left and St. John on the right. Both made byJosé de Mendieta in 1690, next to the sculptor Pedro de Arenalde. The sacristy shows us a quadrangular floor plan with arched walls and a dome-shaped hemisphere vault. The baptistery, has a beautiful gothic pile inside a closed chapel with artistic grille and is decorated with paintings from 1757. There is a seated image of the XVI Century of the Virgin of the Grapes.
In the choir,it is placed the baroque organ recently restored, built around 1735.
ERMITAS
This municipality came to have three hermitages: San Roque, San Torcuato and Santa Maria de Villabuena.
SAN TORCUATO ERMITA
The hermitage of San Torcuato, dedicated to Villabuena’s patron, is located on the north side of the town, it is a well-kept building. Its construction is rectangular, walls of masonry, walks in its surroundings, at half height, by a dividing line, marking a lower part of the wall of greater width than the superior one. On its simple cornice the roof is set to four waters, on whose head wall sits a slender belfry, with several moldings that inscribe the vain of the bell. The three florones are crowned and in the one of the center the cross is interlocked. As forthe gaps in the walls, the entrance through the access doors is thin, broad and simple. It also consists on other ocular vains in the southern upper and headland to the east.The interior has a space in the head, like a sacristy, in which the old door of the hermitage is currently stored. On the wall there are paintings of hanging canvases, which cover a small altarpiece, with a single box.
In it there is the image of San Antonio. To its right, free of the altarpiece, there is the image of San Torcuato with episcopal dresses and insignias.
That the altarpiece is occupied by Saint Anthony Abbot, and not the patron, may be due to the force with which the cult of the blessed extends, as protector of the fields and cattle, especially in the eighteenth century.
ERMITA DE SANTA MARÍA
It also has a rectangular shape. It is covered with a dome of lunetos in the inferior sections, while it remains smooth and of bricks in the superiors. It was restored in 1959, although originally Romanesque from transition to Gothic. From its time they conserved a window, a canecillo that was placed holding the pile of the holy water, a frieze of stone under the pedestal of the Virgin and its image, as well as the access door, with pointed arch. There is a “Andra Mari” from the 14th century: Santa María de Villabuena.