Home to vivid 16th-century frescoes, the Ermita de San Jorge is on the brink of being saved from centuries of decay
A mysterious, dilapidated and exquisitely painted Spanish chapel into which knights on horseback may have ridden centuries ago to receive a wet and most unusual blessing could be on the verge of salvation after a decades-long campaign by local heritage groups.
No one knows much about the crumbling and semi-subterranean Ermita de San Jorge, which sits in a hollow 7 miles (12km) from the city of Cáceres in Extremadura, south-west Spain. Local experts believe it may have been built in the 14th century close to the defensive line erected to guard against possible Muslim incursions after the Christian reconquest, while the only definitively recorded date in its first centuries comes courtesy of Juan de Ribera who decorated the inside of the chapel with vivid biblical frescoes in 1565.
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