Iglesia de San Juan de Jerusalén

Romanic Church that you can only see from the outside since the phone that puts you in contact to see it never answers, at least the times I have tried, and there have been several, I have never contacted, even so it is worth visiting

Although it is a good example of Romanesque in Lower Navarre, the restoration is "too" noticed. Still has an interesting cover and beautiful capitals, some quite deteriorated. Interesting for lovers of Romanesque.

Romanesque church with a beautiful portal and a semicircular apse typical of this style

late twelfth century. Cabanillas was entrusted to the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem (the Order of Malta) although it later became the crown. The temple has undergone important modifications, including a 15th century Gothic vault. Of its Romanesque origin, it only conserves the apse and the front. In 1975 it was closed to worship due to its poor condition, and extensive restoration was undertaken, in which the attached, recently added elements were demolished (many from an ill-fated 1904 reform) and the façade was returned to its original place. In 2002 it was reopened for worship.

The Order of Saint John of Jerusalem (or of the Hospital) arose in the middle of the 11th century in a community that cared for pilgrims in a Jerusalem hospital attached to the Church of Saint John. Popes and kings strongly supported them since to the religious vows they added the vote of arms to collaborate with the crusaders in the defense of the Holy Land and they founded numerous establishments in western Europe to finance their activities in the East. The town of Cabanillas appears mentioned for the first time in the year 1124 in a document in which King Alfonso the Battler grants a charter to its inhabitants. Only 18 years later, in 1142, the Navarrese King García Ramírez el Restaurador cedes the terms of Cabanillas and Fustiñana to the order of Saint John of Jerusalem, with strong implantation in the Crown of Aragon, which will be in charge of building the temple following the artistic canons of the time and that it will become, over the centuries, the southernmost Romanesque temple in all of Navarre. It is a primitive Romanesque church with a single nave, with three corridors marked by bundles or groupings of small columns on wide semicircular pillars. A 15th century Gothic vault covers the central part of the temple, while the octagonal apse is covered with a quarter-sphere vault. Light enters through the typical Romanesque semicircular windows, whose exterior archivolts - concentric moldings - have corbels or projections with animal and human figures. The outer portal is decorated with fantastic animals and in one of its archivolts you can see the figure of a monk dressed in the habits of the religious-military Order of Saint John of Jerusalem.