Iglesia de Santa Leocadia, Toledo

Tower and apse of the church

Portal

The Iglesia de Santa Leocadia is a church located in Toledo, in Castile-La Mancha, Spain. Toledan tradition maintains that this church was built on the site of the house where Saint Leocadia of Toledo was born, to which belonged a small underground room, where it is affirmed that she prayed. This cave corresponds to the crypt located next to the right pillar of the presbytery and is covered with a plaster rib vault, which can be dated to the first half of the 16th century. In the tower and on the façade of the church are preserved, embedded, some fragments of reliefs in Visigothic style.

The parish is mentioned in documents from the middle of the 12th century, with the denomination of "Santa Leocadia within Toledo", to differentiate it from another church, with the same name, "next to the alcázar", built in the place where the saint was in prison, and the basilica outside the walls, known as Cristo de la Vega, where she was buried. Both the present church and the tower respond, in their older parts, to the Toledan Mudéjar of the end of the 13th century, which leads to think that existed another previous building, of which have not been remains. There are only references to think that the primitive arrangement was that of an isolated building, separated of the convento de Santo Domingo el Antiguo by a street that was suppressed, in times of Alfonso X of Castile, when extending that convent.