Semana Santa Estepa

Seville enchants

Originally, this shrine was part of the 16th-century San Sebastian Hospital. Only the pointed-arch doorway leading to the courtyard remains from the original 17th-century shrine. The building was renovated in 1896, but owing to its poor state of repair, it was torn down and rebuilt in 1903.

The first written references about this church date back to 1509, although it appears that it was built after the conquest of the town by Christian troops in 1302. In fact, the original parish church must have been built in the Mudejar style, although nothing remains of it as it was destroyed by the 1755 Lisbon earthquake.

The Nuestra Señora de la Antigua Church, built in the Mudejar style, underwent extensive renovation during the 18th and 19th centuries. The church is accessed through a semi-circular portal. To the left of this portal is a tile panel of Our Lady of Antigua, to whom the church is dedicated. Crowning the entrance is a bell gable containing two bells.

The Franciscan friars of San Juan de Aznalfarache provided for the parishioners of Tomares from the early 15th century until 1808 when the Archbishop of Seville appointed a secular priest to the parish. The Nuestra Señora de Belén Church was built in 1708.

This 19th-century building was previously the San Sebastián Charity Hospital. It has a rectangular plan with a nave and two aisles divided by Tuscan marble columns with semi-circular arches and covered by barrel vaults.

Plaza de Santa Rosalía is a large square in the neighbourhood known as “Barrio de la Ranas”.

Presiding over the Plaza de Santa Rosalía is a wrought-iron cross on a brick pedestal. This cross has stood in the square since time immemorial, and it can be considered the Gines’ “Wayside Cross”. 

The present building stands on the site of two earlier churches, built in the 16th and 17th centuries, respectively. Although the construction work began in 1723, it was not completed until 1800.