Cañete la Real – San Francisco Convent

Church of the Convent of San Francisco – Cañete la Real

The Church of the Convent of San Francisco is located in the Andalusian town of Cañete la Real, province of Málaga.

Funded in 1624, this temple has a Latin cross floor plan with half barrel vaults that conserve plasters ornamentation from the 17th century. Its façade presents a modest front: a lintel supported by pilasters topped with a pediment and a small bell tower. The church conserved its cloister until last century. This church was used as a night club until the Town Hall of Cañete la Real purchased it and started its restoration.

The Church of the Convent of San Francisco has a Latin cross plan and the nave is covered with a half-barrel vault with transverse arches and lunettes, with a high choir at the foot; the transept is covered with a semi-orange vault on pendentives. On the Gospel side (left) there is a side chapel, covered with a half-orange vault from the 18th century, decorated with 17th-century plasterwork, and the arms and chancel with half-barrel vaults with lunettes and decoration from the 18th century.

Attached to the church there was -until 1981- a small cloister with a square floor plan, with three semicircular arches on pillars on each front and on the ground floor and flat balconies on the upper gallery. The facade of the church, much disfigured lately, is of great simplicity, highlighting the brick doorway with smooth folded pilasters marking out the lintelled access and a triangular pediment with an added niche and flat pyramids on both sides.