Foto de stock - The city of Leon provided to pilgrims walking the Camino de Santiago a good hospital care. Of all the most famous centers is the Convent of San Marcos, founded in 1152 by Queen Sancha. He ordered to build a church and hospital that rise in what is now the Plaza de San Marcos. Hospital occupied the same place until the eighteenth century when a new one was built next to the church, which today is home to the Public Defender. . The convent was rebuilt in the sixteenth century, becoming one of the masterpieces of Spanish Plateresque. It was commissioned by the Catholic Monarchs to the teacher Pedro de Larrea to the Knights of the Order of Santiago, who ran this institution helped by friars. In the execution of works they intervened Martin de Villareal and Juan de Orozco. . The facade is decorated with medallions and statues (many of them lost) with universal themes extolling the monarchy of Charles I, mixed with Jacobean motifs and characters of the classical world. The central space that bisects the facade is a remodeling done during the Baroque, formed by a semicircular arch between four columns, on which there is a relief of Santiago Matamoros. Above a baroque balcony, an attic and a rosette is carved stone against the sky available. Interestingly, part of facade lies between the porch and the river is an added eighteenth century by Juan de Rivero and Martin Susniego, with extraordinary fidelity to the above that the feeling of being the work of one era is created. . The work of the church began in 1531, devoting ten years later. It has a Latin cross and consists of a wide nave with starry vaults. In the transept doors giving access to the cloister and the sacristy, the work of Juan de Badajoz the Younger also covered with three starred vaults are opened. The choir stalls of the church was completed in 1542, Guillén Doncel working on it with the collaboration of Juan de Juni. On the cover of the church two reliefs of the Crucifixion and the Deposition, the first of Juan de Orozco and the second attributed to Juan de Juni and Juan de Angers are represented. . The cloister was built between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, decorándose with medallions of Juan de Badajoz and plant elements of the hand of Juan de Juni. . Currently the space formerly occupied by the Convent is divided into three areas: the church, the Archaeological Museum and the Parador de Turismo, one of the best hotels in Europe in its category.