Middle Age. VII.
The pantheon of the kings of León, is located at the foot of the basilica of San Isidoro de León, is the place where during the Middle Ages most of the kings and queens of the kingdom of León were buried. rectangular with portico, of approximately eight meters on each side, with two robust columns on which seven arches that divide the space in three naves are supported. The pictorial cycle that adorns its walls is considered one of the summits of the Spanish Romanesque.Sancha de León , wife of Fernando I of Leon persuaded her husband so that both to his death were buried in the monastery of San Juan Baptist of Leon that changed its name by the one of San Isidoro when the rest of the Sevillian saint were transferred to the monastery in the year 1063 at the request of Ferdinand I, who wanted the relics of the illustrious Sevillian archbishop to rest in the city of Leon Years before, the father of Queen Sancha, Alfonso V de León, ordered the transfer of the bodies Several kings and queens who were scattered throughout the territory of Leon in order that all together lay in San Isidoro de León. For a long time the frescoes of San Isidoro de León were attached to the Franco-Romanesque style, which penetrated into Spain thanks to the pilgrimage routes and the political contacts with France and that settled down in the leonesas lands, in clear opposition to the current that arrived from Italy, that remained in the Northeast. Its development meant, in its zone of influence, the definitive eradication of the remains of Byzantinism, excessive symbolism and the richness of trappings and the beginning of the great Hispanic historiated cycles. Experts see this French trace in the predominance of white backgrounds, in the predilection for few colors applied on smooth surfaces and in their rudeness and great expressivity. At the beginning of the 19th century, during the War of Independence, the basilica was occupied by the Napoleonic troops who They turned the temple into a haystack and used the stone sepulchres of the kings as drinking troughs for their mounts. They extracted the real remains of the tombs in which they were, making it impossible at present to recognize and individualize the remains of different kings.In 1997 a study of the remains of the kings who still rest was carried out. there.
