The 16th-century Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción

The Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de la Asunción is a 16th-century temple situated in the municipality of Tembleque, in the province of Toledo. The 1509 expedition to Orán, commanded by Cardinal Cisneros, can be considered the driving event for the construction of the building. Cisneros made substantial donations for the temple in gratitude for the million maravedíes and the company of soldiers supplied by the locality of Tembleque, with additional contributions from the priors of San Juan and the local residents.

Built primarily in the first half of the 16th century, the temple features modifications carried out between 1582 and 1596 supervised by Nicolás Vergara el Mozo. The building has a Latin cross plan with a single nave of considerable height and a polygonal cabecera. The structure is made of ashlar and features powerful buttresses on the exterior. Inside, the nave is divided by both pillars and columns, with the ceiling featuring a ribbed vault with abundant ribs.

The temple includes several chapels situated between the exterior buttresses. The Baptisterio, San Ramón, and the chapel of the Cristo de las Misericordias are of a Gothic style, while others were transformed in the 18th century, such as the chapels of Jesús de Nazareno (1765) and the Virgen del Rosario (1756). The latter was provided by Antonio Fernández de Alejo, a knight of the Order of Santiago.

A notable element of the temple is its tower, located to the left of the church's feet. It consists of three superimposed bodies, with the lower one being cubic and the upper two being octagonal with openings finished with semi-circular arches. The third body features arches marked by rustication. The tower is crowned by a parapet of balusters and pinnacles, leading to a sharp spire of slate and lead with a ball and weather vane.

Between 2011 and 2015, various improvement works were carried out on the temple, including the full repair of the building's roofs and renovations on the chapels of Jesús de Nazareno and the Virgen del Rosario, as the latter was in a state of deterioration prior to the work.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons