CONVENT CHURCH OF LA VICTORIA
This temple was part of the convent erected in 1639 by the Franciscan order of the Mínimos de la Victoria on the houses they received as a donation from Doña Juana Tomé, widow of Captain Gonzalo Rodríguez Cascos, in 1633.
The temple is simple and austere, with a single rectangular nave with a half-barrel vault roof and a gable roof on the exterior; the presbytery and main altar are also covered with a dome and a hipped roof on the exterior.
In 1770 the building was enlarged and the present bell tower was added. The most outstanding architectural element is its baroque façade, framed by pilasters on whose lintel is the coat of arms of this Franciscan order.
In this church were buried during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries important figures related to the Royal Navy and the Carrera de Indias, such as Don Honorato Bonifacio Papachino, Admiral of the Royal Navy and Governor of the Navy of Flanders, in 1696 or the Cordovan shipbuilder and scholar Don Francisco Antonio Garrote, Admiral of the Fleet of the Indies, in 1705.
In its interior this temple preserves the best known sculptural group of the brilliant Sevillian baroque imagery Luisa Roldán “La Roldana”, the magnificent carvings of Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, the Cristo Yacente and San Francisco de Paula, all of them made in 1688.
They are currently the titular members of the Brotherhood of Penitence of Our Lady of Solitude, Holy Burial of Our Lord Jesus Christ and St. Francis of Paula. Other works of interest include a Captive Jesus by the Genoese sculptor Jácome Bacaro and an Immaculate Conception by the Valencian sculptor Ignacio Vergara Gimeno, both from the mid-18th century.
The old convent is attached to the left side of the church and partially preserves its original typology with a central courtyard around which the convent facilities were distributed, with the friars’ living quarters on the upper floors.
After the disentailment of the 19th century, the Hospital de la Misericordia was installed in the old convent, and since 1882 it has been assisted by the Congregation of the Carmelite Sisters of Charity.
