Hermitage of San Nicolás

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria · Category: Architecture · Subcategory: Religious architecture · Year: 1696 · Authors: Cristóbal González

The hermitage of San Nicolás de Bari was the centre of the neighbourhood that bears its name since the late 17th century. Its founder and patron was Juan de Matos, who commissioned in December 1696 the master stonemason Cristóbal González to build this temple, after a licence was granted by the diocesan bishop, Bernardo Vicuña y Zuazo.

It is a Mudejar construction with a rectangular floor plan, a single nave and a double-pitched tiled roof. On its main façade we observe a simple doorway with a semicircular arch and a small central bell gable as a finishing touch.

The interior, covered by a simple but very interesting wooden coffered ceiling, houses the figure of the patron saint, a carving made at the end of the 17th century by the sculptor Miguel Gil Suárez. The temple also houses another carving of Our Lady of Loreto, of a later date, the work of the prestigious artist José Luján Pérez.

The hermitage of San Nicolás not only served as a spiritual response to an increasingly large humble-origin neighbourhood that had settled on these steep slopes, but also as a hospice and resting place for pilgrims who came in procession with the Virgen del Pino from Teror to Las Palmas, in prayers, before the various misfortunes (plagues, droughts, epidemics, etc.) that occurred over time on the island.

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