Iglesia de la Asunción

The parish church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción is the most substantial monument in Tarancón, a late-Gothic foundation begun in the sixteenth century and expanded in stages over the following two hundred years. The west front is its great set-piece: a heavily ornamented Plateresque doorway crowded with saints, columns and the heraldry of the local lords.

The interior is dim and tall, with ribbed Gothic vaults, a Baroque main altar and a side chapel containing the tomb of Manuel Godoy — the eighteenth-century chief minister and royal favourite, whose family came from Tarancón. The church faces the Plaza de la Constitución and is the obvious anchor for a short walk through the old town.

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A story
A side chapel holds the tomb of Manuel Godoy, the late-eighteenth-century *valido* (royal favourite) who effectively governed Spain under Carlos IV. Born to minor Extremaduran gentry, he rose to dukedom and the queen's bed, was deposed in the Aranjuez riot of 1808, and died penniless in Paris — but his family had bought into Tarancón, and his remains were returned here long after his fall.