Ceinos de Campos: a Templar village in the Tierra de Campos

Out on the wheat plains of the Tierra de Campos, in the north-west of Valladolid province, the small village of Ceinos de Campos owes its very existence to the Knights Templar. Barely 130 people live here now, yet the place carries the memory of the warrior monks who settled here in the 12th century.

A Templar past

From around 1168 Ceinos was a Templar holding, and the order built here the monastery and church of Santa Maria del Temple, a fine Romanesque building that became the parish church after the order was dissolved. Reduced to ruin over the centuries, it was finally dismantled in the 19th century and its stones reused elsewhere.

The Romanesque arcade returns

The most remarkable survival of that lost church is a beautiful stone arcade, which for many years was displayed far away in the National Sculpture Museum in Valladolid. In 2014 its three arches were brought home and re-erected in a garden on Calle Mota, where they can be admired once more. The village also keeps the Mudejar church of Santiago, notable for its carved wooden ceiling, amid the adobe houses typical of the region.

Getting there

Ceinos de Campos is about sixty-four kilometres north-west of Valladolid, in the farming country near Villalon de Campos.