Hermitage of Sant Feliu

What it is

Sant Feliu is on the Carretera del Castell, on the hillside, beside the Bellveret viewpoint: you see it as you go up to the castle. It is one of the oldest churches in the former Kingdom of Valencia. It was built in 1265, shortly after James I's Christian conquest, on the site of Roman Saetabis and over the remains of the Visigothic cathedral: Xàtiva was an episcopal seat in the sixth and seventh centuries, and some of those stones can be seen today in the Almodí Museum.

Outside: the porch and the doorway

The first thing that catches the eye is the side porch, facing north, which covers the side façade. It is supported by six marble columns taken from older Roman buildings, all different; some have the pinkish tone of the nearby Buixcarró quarries. The doorway is Romanesque, plain, and a rarity: the conquest came when Gothic was already spreading, so very few like it remain in Valencian lands.

Inside

Inside there is a thirteenth-century alabaster baptismal font, Romanesque in style, with scenes of the Nativity and the Adoration of the Shepherds, floral decoration at the base and traces of its original polychrome. The walls keep wall paintings from the first half of the fourteenth century that were hidden under whitewash and have been partly restored. The tourist office describes them as the largest surviving ensemble of linear or proto-Gothic medieval painting in the Valencian Community: an altarpiece of Saint Nicholas of Bari to the left of the high altar, the Virgin enthroned in the chapel between the second and third arch, and a Saint Christopher and a Calvary in the second chapel on the Epistle side.

The high altarpiece presides, Gothic from the early fifteenth century and attributed to the workshop of the Cabanes brothers. It has 27 painted panels, arranged in three streets plus the predella and the polsera, and two later sculptures of Saint Feliu of Girona and Saint Felix of Lyon. It was commissioned by the city's jurats and bears the arms of Xàtiva and of the Crown of Aragon. The tourism website offers two audio guides, one for the exterior and one for the interior, which you can listen to on your phone during the visit.

Hours and how to get there

The tourism website does not publish the hours or the price: ask at the tourist office, at Avenida de Selgas 2, on 96 227 33 46 or at [email protected]. You walk from the old town along the Carretera del Castell, uphill with little shade. If you would rather not walk up, the Sunday and public holiday shuttle goes to the castle. Allow about half an hour to see it.