Santa María la Mayor Church (14th century) and Castle-palace (12th century) - Valderrobres
Castle-Palace
The enclosure is made up of three intermediate levels plus an upper one or terrace. They have windows and openings of different shapes depending on the floors. On the first floor there are a series of semicircular windows. On the second floor the windows are decorated with Gothic tracery. On the third level there was a Gothic vault and large windows with semicircular arches. There was a bay in the patio, which was formed by two floors with arcades. Inside, the Chimney Hall stands out, with three pointed arches with tracery on the windows. Upstairs there is a spectacular gallery with eleven semicircular arches. To all this we must add a very extensive heraldry with the shields of the archbishops García Fernández de Heredia and Dalmau de Mur y Cervellón. In addition, there is an aerial passageway that connects the castle with the church of Santa María la Mayor. The material used to build this impressive defensive mass is stone, completely worked into well-made ashlars arranged in horizontal rows. This system is extended to both the walls and the towers that make up the structure of the building. The material was extracted from the mountain itself to which the building is attached. Its rooms include the Stables room, the Chapter room, the Chimneys room, a large kitchen, the Lions room and the Golden Chamber. The floor plan of the enclosure is irregularly hexagonal in shape, adapting to the terrain where it sits, with all its sides straight, but unequal. At its vertices there are cubes higher than the wall, finishing everything with defensive battlements connected by a wall path. Its interior layout is as usual, with rooms around an open patio surrounded by a high barrier. The northern half of the castle is more militaristic in nature.
Church of Santa María la Mayor
The church began its construction in the second half of the 14th century, specifically between 1321 and 1423.3 by Archbishop Pedro Lope de Luna, who built the apse and the first two sections of the temple. With the arrival of García Fernández de Heredia to the archbishopric, the third section and the bell tower were completed, built slightly later than the central building, achieving a perfect fit between the castle and the church. Later, in the 18th century, a new construction was added, the sacristy fitted next to the apse of the temple. The church of Valderrobres has a single nave, following the North European model, with three sections and side chapels in each of them except in the second, where the doorway is. The apse has seven sides covered with a vault with eight ribs. All its sides show a window adorned with tracery, of which the one in the center is the most complex. The stained glass windows and flamboyant rose windows are covered with translucent alabaster. It is one of the most splendid examples of Levantine Gothic in the province of Teruel
