Church of San Mateo

The church of San Mateo is the primary church of Tarifa, since it stopped to be the wiped out chapel of Santa Maria, based on the remaining parts of an old mosque inside the premises of its Alcazaba (Tarifa). Its starting point is by all accounts in the statistic and urban increment that the town encounters because of the Christian triumph of the Battle of the Salado, and by the victory that the Granadans of Muhammed V made on Algeciras in the year 1369 after a concise attack, compelling Christians to take asylum and settle in Tarifa, taking with them records, gems, pictures and holy vessels of the area of Algeciras.

To this time relates the crude plant of the congregation, of three naves, and the vaults of Gothic cruceria, exceptionally explained particularly in the focal ship and in the journey, where it turns into an amazing vault of terceletes. Additionally of this time are the auxiliary and pushing arrangement of these vaults, which lay on pilasters framed by fine baquetones with capitals and bases cut separately on basic construct; and in light of the outside the thick supports, noticeable on the left side and covered up under side sanctuaries in the eighteenth century on the right. It has a roundabout floor design, it is secured with a brilliant vault on pendentives that reaches out to the ground framing three half circle sanctuaries, the biggest plant.