PARK OF SAN FRANCISCO

Located on the gardens of an old convent, this emblematic walk of Badajoz was inaugurated in year 1836, suffering numerous reforms throughout the time. His current aspect dates back to the last remodeling realized in 1999. The geometric distribution of the square turns about monumentally " kiosk of the music " that is surrounded with a small reservoir. Other two sinks with small sources, disappeared after these works.

Equidistant of the center of the square, four magnificent banks realized in brick and adorned with magnificent copies of ceramics, remember the epic of the Extremaduran conquerors in America. The whole exterior perimeter of the walk is flanked by more than fifty palms of great freightage.

The history of this place was impregnated initially by the presence of several convents, of many that in the past were established in the city. Little by little, the closing was closed and his buildings were re-turned into many of the barracks that there was receiving the numerous garrison destined in this important strong frontier square. In the this flank of the great rectangle that shapes this garden, the Convent of San Francisco got up in 1337, On his chapel Baptizer was raised the church of San Juan in the 18th century, with the patronage of D. Juan V of Portugal in gratefulness to the city where his daughter Barbara de Braganza became engaged to the Spanish monarch Fernando VI.
After the disentailment and his later abandon, the facilities were used as barrack of the regiment of Castile and something later, the church was a garage of the Army of the Air. To the opposite side of the square, where today the known one gets up as Simago's tower, one was finding the Engineers' park, obscenely demolished as so many other monuments, in altars of the "modernization" of the city. His notable portico of entry is nowadays attached to one of the walls of the court of the Provincial Museum of Fine arts.

Antonio García Candelas     Suggestions and impressions