Hermitage of Santo Domingo

Anyone arriving in Lécera will quickly recognise the silhouette of the Hermitage of Santo Domingo, thanks to the tall octagonal lantern rising above its roofs. It is a Baroque church of considerable size, yet what stands out most is not so much its scale as the balance of its proportions and the care with which it was built. Since 2002 it has been listed as a Catalogued Asset of Aragonese Cultural Heritage (Bien Catalogado del Patrimonio Cultural Aragonés).

From the outside, the building is striking for the sheer solidity of its volumes. Its walls combine rubble masonry with brick and ashlar quoins, while the brick eaves play with dentils, fillet courses and sawtooth patterns. Over time, side buttresses were added, along with a bell gable above the façade and a porch sheltering the doorway, which opens at the west end in a broad round arch with voussoirs. It is well worth looking up at the lantern: with pilasters at the corners, round-arched openings and staggered panels of projecting brick corners, it is topped by a small cupola.

Inside, the church follows a Latin cross plan, with a single three-bay nave, a polygonal apse and a transept whose arms are also polygonal. The nave is covered by barrel vaults with lunettes, supported by transverse arches resting on pilasters with robust Corinthian capitals, while at the west end the raised choir sits on a segmental arch.

The highlight of the visit comes beneath the crossing. Here a dome on pendentives rises, crowned by the lantern, and it is in this area that the Baroque- and classically inspired stucco decoration is concentrated. The pendentives feature reliefs of the Evangelists, surrounded by plant motifs, coats of arms, angels and female busts. A powerful moulded entablature runs along the plastered and painted walls, lending unity to a space that surprises with its elegance.