You’re standing in front of the Basilica of Santa María de los Reales Alcázares, one of the defining landmarks of Plaza Vázquez de Molina, and before you is a building that layers almost two thousand years of history. Beneath your feet lie traces from the Copper and Bronze Ages, followed by Iberian, Roman and Visigothic remains, and later the site became Úbeda’s main mosque during the Islamic period. According to medieval chronicles, on 29 September 1233 King Ferdinand III entered through one of the doors still visible today in the cloister to consecrate the mosque as a Christian church under the name of Our Lady of the Assumption. When you look at the façade, you’re seeing a Renaissance project begun around 1510 based on designs by Pedro de Vera, with a grand portal meant to open the church toward the city, later crowned by Luis de Zayas’ sculpted pediment of the Adoration of the Shepherds. The two bell towers on either side, added in the nineteenth century, show how the basilica kept evolving long after its origins. Although the façade looks harmonious, it hides a mix of styles: Gothic, Mudéjar, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical and even Neo-Gothic, a kind of artistic democracy where no single style truly dominates. Inside, you’ll find a fifteenth-century Gothic cloister built over the mosque’s former ablutions courtyard, with sixteen funeral chapels that once held the tombs of Úbeda’s bishops and noble families. One doorway especially cherished by locals, the Portada de la Consolada, is the route used every Good Friday by the brotherhood of Jesús Nazareno, a powerful moment during the town’s Holy Week. And if you look up at the tower, you can still spot part of the old Islamic minaret, partly demolished in the nineteenth century after being weakened by the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. If you’d like to explore further, the basilica is open to visitors during regular hours; entry is ticketed, but it gives you the chance to wander through the interior and cloister at your own pace and take in the full sweep of history held within these walls.