Basilica of San Vicente

Basilica of San Vicente tickets: which one to buy

Entry is by a small ticket bought at the door, and an audio guide is included in most versions. The basilica stands just outside the medieval walls of Avila, a five-minute walk from the cathedral, and the two are usually seen together; there is no combined ticket, but both are inexpensive. Private walking tours of the old town include the basilica and cost several times the entry, which is worth it here only if you want the Romanesque sculpture explained properly.

Avila is ninety minutes from Madrid by train and easy as a day trip; organised tours from Madrid usually pair it with Segovia and give you about two hours in each. The walls themselves are a separate ticket and the best single thing in the town. Queues do not form at the basilica at any time of year. A joint ticket with the cathedral and the other Romanesque churches of Avila is sold at the tourist office rather than at any church door.

Visiting Basilica of San Vicente: what to see

The church stands where, according to tradition, three young Christians named Vicente, Sabina and Cristeta were executed under Diocletian and buried in the rock. Building began in 1175 in warm-coloured granite and sandstone and dragged into the fourteenth century, which is why the west front has a Romanesque doorway under a later Gothic gallery. That western portal is one of the finest in Spain, with apostles carved on the jambs whose faces and hands have a naturalism that arrived here decades before it reached France.

Inside, the cenotaph of the three martyrs is a polychrome stone chest of the twelfth century, carved on every side with their arrest, trial and death in vivid comic-strip sequence, under a fifteenth-century wooden canopy. A crypt below holds the rock where the bodies were laid and the image of the Virgin of the Underground, the city's patroness. The Virgin of the Underground stands in a chamber below the nave reached by a short flight of steps, and local families still bring babies to be presented there.

Basilica of San Vicente opening hours and the best time to go

Open daily from morning to early evening with a break in the middle of the day; hours are shorter from November to March and the church closes for Sunday morning mass. Avila sits at 1,130 metres and is the coldest provincial capital in Spain, bitter from December to February and pleasant in summer when Madrid is unbearable. The sandstone of the west front glows in the late afternoon, which is the hour for photographs.

The town fills briefly at midday with coach groups and is quiet the rest of the time. Dress modestly. Photography without flash is allowed. Allow forty minutes. The walk around the outside of the walls, free and about two and a half kilometres, passes the basilica and is the best way to see the town. Avila's walls are floodlit at night and the basilica sits directly outside the Puerta de San Vicente, one of the nine gates.