Puntos de Interés
Municipality
Mazalvete
In a relatively flat area, just five kilometres from Candilichera and 18 kilometres from the city of Soria, lies the hamlet of Mazalvete, surrounded by the municipalities of Arancón, Cabrejas del Campo and Almenar.
According to the historian Eduardo Carrión, the name Mazalvete may come from the Arabic word manzar or manzil, which would refer to certain watchtowers on the Moorish border on the road from Soria to Calatayud. After the Christian reconquest in 1119, these territories became part of the Tierra de Soria, in the Sexmo de Arciel.
Located on a high bank that serves as an atrium, stands the Church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción, the main local landmark. It was built using sandstone masonry, boulders, corners, openings and the bell tower made of ashlar masonry. It features a single rectangular floor plan topped by a square tower. Its nave is divided into four bays, including the chancel, and is covered by groin vaults. The façade is simple but impeccably executed, with a semicircular arch chamfered corners supported by double pilasters with mother-of-pearl imposts. A baptismal font, with its smooth truncated cone-shaped vase is still preserved inside. Of its Romanesque past, only the north and south walls of what used to be its nave remain.
The town celebrates its patron saint's festivities in honour of San Paulino de Nola every 22 June, as well as the festivals of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción on 15 August.
