About this place
Founded in 1611 by Queen Margaret of Austria, wife of Philip the Third, the Monasterio de la Encarnación is a working convent of cloistered Augustinian nuns that still guards an extraordinary collection of royal art and sacred objects. Its austere granite-and-brick facade, a model of sober Habsburg taste, hides richly decorated interiors, a fine church rebuilt in the eighteenth century, and galleries of seventeenth-century paintings. Its greatest fame, however, lies in its reliquary room, a dazzling chamber lined with hundreds of relics in ornate cases. Among them is a small vial said to contain the dried blood of San Pantaleón, an early Christian martyr. According to a centuries-old tradition, the blood miraculously liquefies each year on the eve of his feast day, the twenty-seventh of July, drawing the faithful and the curious alike.
Key facts
- 1611 year — The convent was founded by Queen Margaret of Austria, wife of Philip III
- 700 relics — Fill the convent's famous reliquary chamber in ornate cases
- 27 July — The date each year when the blood of San Pantaleón is said to liquefy
📍 Plaza de la Encarnación 1, 28013, Madrid