The history of the Santos Juanes church, located in a privileged spot in the center of Valencia where important guilds were established, begins in 1238 with the conquest by King Jaume I, who donated all the mosques and cemeteries to the Church, with the exception of the Main Mosque, whose land was destined for a market.
Two years later, the parish was founded, and its connection with merchants united the church with the city's businesses. In 1311, it suffered its first fire, after which the temple was rebuilt from a Gothic prism with ribbed vaults, sober decoration, and lighting through stained-glass windows in the chapels.
In 1858, the church received the title of 'Royal', granted by Queen Isabel II, and in 1936 it suffered its last fire, following the outbreak of the Civil War, in a framework of anticlerical violence that caused irreversible damage to the decoration.
On the night of July 18, 1936, after the coup led to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, militants of anarchist and republican ideology provoked a terrifying fire that reduced to ashes much of the Church of Santos Juanes. The flames spread with such speed, fanned by the wooden roof, that they turned the temple's interior into a furnace that burned for several days. The fire took everything: the main altarpiece, the images, the archives, and the pictorial decoration by the illustrious painter Antonio Palomino.
The second fire occurred in 1592, destroying the main altarpiece and the apse wall. Its murals, cracked by the heat, smoke, and water used to extinguish the fire, became practically unrecognizable.
At the end of the war, the works of reconstruction of worship began, and in 1947, thanks to the intervention of the Marquis of Lozoya, Director General of Fine Arts, the temple was declared a Monument of National Interest.
The Hortensia Herrero Foundation has developed a comprehensive restoration of the church through a structural intervention led by the team of architect Carlos Campos and a pictorial-ornamental repair headed by Pilar Roig and the University Institute of Heritage Restoration (IRP) of the Polytechnic University of Valencia.
Art collector and vice president of Mercadona, Hortensia Herrero, has paid almost ten million euros for the work that has lasted five years.
The restoration culminated with traditional and digital procedures, added to new biocleaning techniques with bacteria and the introduction of audiovisual elements. As a final touch to the restoration, Hortensia Herrero wanted to offer Valencia an additional gift: the immersive projection project "Barroc Immersive", which transforms the temple into a space of light, sound, and audiovisual narrative.
