The inner chamber
A two-storey structure standing inside the church itself.
Carlos Delgado — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Pacodonderis — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Pacodonderis — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Marmontel — CC BY 2.0
**A twelve-sided round church of the 13th century, with a two-storey chamber standing inside it** — outside the walls, directly opposite the Alcázar. It was built in **1208**, ⚠ **and its form is entirely unusual**: **a twelve-sided polygon** instead of a cross plan, **with a free-standing two-storey structure at its heart**, reached by a narrow stair. ⚠ **It was long attributed to the Knights Templar** — ✅ **and more probably belonged to the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre**; ⚠ **though the Templar attribution is still repeated in guidebooks**. ✅ **The round form is deliberate**: **an imitation of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem** — **a common pattern in crusading-order churches** — ⚠ **and it held a fragment of the True Cross**. ✅ **And it offers the best view of the Alcázar** across the valley.
A two-storey structure standing inside the church itself.
Twelve sides instead of the usual cross plan.
The castle across the valley from in front of the church.
Carretera de Zamarramala, 40003 Segovia, Spain
**In imitation of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem — and the shape itself was a message.** ✅ **The origin**: the **Church of the Holy Sepulchre** in Jerusalem was built around Christ's tomb **on a circular plan** enclosing the tomb at its centre. ⚠ **Pilgrimage there was the highest ambition of a medieval Christian**, **but impossible for most people**. ✅ **So the form travelled**: **the military orders returning from the East — the Templars and the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre especially — built round churches in Europe** ⚠ **reproducing the Sepulchre's plan**, **so that visiting one became a symbolic substitute for the pilgrimage**; **the same idea behind church floor labyrinths**. ✅ **The central structure is the point**: **the inner building here represents the *aedicula*** — the shrine covering the tomb in Jerusalem; **so the believer walks around it as a pilgrim walks around the tomb**. ⚠ **What visitors get wrong**: **not every round church is Templar** — ✅ **the form was widely used by others**, **and ascribing every round building to the Templars is a common tourist myth**; **this church is itself an example**.
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