Virgin of Carmel Church (Cartagena)

 Gallery

This church was built between the final years of the 17th century and the year 1710, in the suburb of San Roque. At that time, it served as the church of the Convent of Saint Joachim of the Order of the Discalced Carmelites.

In 1887, the church was declared a parish. Later, it suffered looting and destruction due to the outbreak of anti-clerical violence in 1936. In that event, it lost most of the works of art that it housed. The works that we can see when visiting today are from 1940 onwards.

The work of the image of the Virgin of Carmel, located in the dressing room of the main altar, was made in the 1940s by the Valencians José Maria Rausell Montaña and Francisco Llorens Ferrer. In addition to this image, the image of the Christ of Faith, made by Mariano Benlliure, and the image of Saint Francis of Assisi, the work of Juan González Moreno, stand out.

Of this architectural work, with an imposing facade, the mixture of popular and classic elements stands out, together with the portico, which is seen as a transitional section between the interior and exterior of the temple, covered with a dome with a wavy cornice very rarely seen in Baroque architecture.