Igrexa de San Francisco de Betanzos and the tomb of Fernán Pérez de Andrade

The Igrexa de San Francisco in Betanzos is a church built in the second half of the 14th century. Fernán Peres de Andrade, known as O Boo, rebuilt the monastery that previously existed there since the 13th century. The church was declared a Monumento Nacional in 1919 and was later declared Ben de Interese Cultural. It features a Latin floor plan with a single nave, a polygonal apse with a ribbed vault, and two rectangular side chapels.

The main entrance represents the Adoration of the Kings. On the exterior of the church, rose windows, stained glass, and figurative gargoyles are distributed. At the peak of the roof of one of the church's arms, there is a cross held by a wild boar.

Inside, in the main chapel, there is a relief representing God in majesty surrounded by the four evangelists. On the nerves of the vault, angels play different instruments, including one playing a bagpipe. The church also features several capitals with fantastic animals, but notably, it holds a large collection of 16 sarcophagi from different members of the Andrade family, which is the most interesting historical-artistic element of the temple.

The most interesting piece is the tomb of Fernán Pérez himself, considered a precedent for medieval funerary sculpture. Originally located in the main chapel, it was moved to the foot of the church under the choir in 1782. The sarcophagus is raised from the ground on a base of animals representative of the Andrade family: a bear and a wild boar. The Andrade coat of arms is at the head and foot, while the sides show scenes of hunting the wild boar. Above the sarcophagus, a laud depicts the knight in armor in a resting position. Four angels watch over the corpse, with one holding a censer and the other three reading psalter books. The right hand of Fernán rests on the heart and the left holds the hilt of the sword, which shows the Mark of Solomon on its pommel.

An annex to the church was a Franciscan monastery that once housed 47 mendicant monks. After the disamortization of 1835, the monastery was abandoned and many of its facilities, such as the chapter house or the cloister, disappeared in 1880. The monks returned to occupy the temple and what remained of the monastery in 1914, inaugurating a new residence in 1919, but it was burned in July 1936.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons