Taking the Iglesia street we come near the Parish church of Santiago built at the will the previously mentioned Marquis de Priego. Its construction was started in the immediate years after the demolition of the Castle with the stone of the ruins and inside the enclosure of the Puerta del Sol.

With simple architecture of slight gothic features,

it has three spacious naves supported in the middle by strong square pillars joined in an ogival arch and a barrel vault for a ceiling built at the end of the eighteenth century in which the original coffered ceiling was removed.

According to the eighteenth century scholar Antonio Jurado y Aguilar, the origin of the temple goes back to the days when the city was conquered, setting I the main mosque which was consecrated to Christianity in July of the year 1240.

But the present Parish must have been built in the first half of the sixteenth century and local historians say that they made the most fo the stones of the old fortress of the Aguilars tobuild it.

On 10th March 1577 the architect Hernán Ruiz started the construction of a tower on the main façade of the main Church of Santiago built with the old stones of the demolished Castle of Fernández de Córdoba.

When they finished building, in the following it was practically destroyed by the devastating effects of the famous earthquake of Lisbon in 1755. Two years later, on the initiative of the Duke of Medinaceli, they started the reconstruction of the tower, which was eventually finished in 1789.

From this period and being the only Parish in the town, until the end of the nineteenth century, its nine bells, including those of the old clock, ended up having a relevant role in the everyday life of the population.

A document dated 15th July 1437 mentions this old temple dedicated to the invocation of the apostle Santiago, and it was kept from the sixteenth century by the Marques de Priego Señores de Montilla.

The present Parish of Santiago

The old building has suffered some transformations, although the main structures remain. Over the last few years, the Parish of Santiago has needed some work. The last ones were performed between December of the year 1997 and September of 1998 and were centred on the restoration of the altarpiece of San Juan Bautista, placed in the chapel of the same name. The sixteenth century altarpiece was made by Pedro Delgado and the carpenter Juan Alba. In its restoration they spent nearly twelve million pesetas paid by the Board of Culture of the Junta of Andalusia.

With simple gothic features the Parish of Santiago has three wide naves held in the centre by strong square pillars, joined in an ogival arch and barrel vault ceiling, built at the end of the eighteenth century when the original coffered ceiling was removed.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, in 1639, the Sagrario Chapel was built. To build it stones were taken from the church's graveyard according to several historians and scholars of the town.

The cupola of the old Sagrario Chapel to the right, is the only one that keeps its original appearance. It is decorated with extravagant plaster work which compose a series of iconographies with the busts of the evangelists. Under this cupola, on the baroque altarpiece which came from the Iglesia de la Encarnación, we can notice an Ecce Homo de Juan de Mesa, carved in 1601.

All in all there are seven chapels at either side, some of them very wide, such as the one that today acts as the Sagrario, and with different levels of decoration. The first one on our left, with an iron gate taken from the late San Lorenzo Convent, is known as the Animas Chapel. This holds the baptismal font in which San Francisco Solano, patron saint of montilla, was baptized. The baptismal record of Solano from 1437 has been kept intact in the parish, with a letter that the Saint wrote to his brother from America. Thus,in 1927 this chapel was restored, decorating it with plaster work alluding to this patron saint. Every Sunday many Montillans are baptized in this font.

Another of the chapels which deserves mentioning is the in fact the biggest and is used today as a tabernacle. During one of the restorations carried out in 1932, the Alvear family made it their family vault and it was shaped into its current neomudejar appearance. Underneath this magnificent chapel, entering its interior through a little door and down some stairs that lead to the cellar, we find the riches of the family of Francisco de Alvear y Gómez de la Cortina. In a prominent place, independent from the rest of the riches, his daughter's tomb, that of Asunción de Alvear y Abaurrea, who died when she was only twenty-five. Dominating the family vault is an impressive bronze Christ from the beginning of last century, which imitates Romanic art.

The Rosario Chapel, with the Holy Virgin illuminated at the back, should also be pointed out for its beauty and the fact that it houses, under its chapel, another vault which belongs to an important clergyman.

The History of the Christ of Zacatecas

An old legend surrounds the Christ which, from the main altarpiece, dominates the Parish of Santiago. The Christ of Zacatecas, brought over from a Mexican city of the same name in 1576, was built with a resin of mixed ferule with crushed seeds, a technique developed by American natives.

The impressive wooden cross and the body of Christ were built hollow to cross the ocean full of gold, so that the treasure wouldn't be found by the Spanish Crown. For a long time the Christ of Zacatecas stayed in the hermitage of the Veracruz, now disappeared.

Images of San Luis Gonzaga, Inmaculada, San Francisco de Borja, San Estanislao or San Pedro de Alcántara are works carried out by the Sisters of Cueto.

On an important altarpiece stands San Francisco Solano, the work of Pedro de Mena. This was commissioned by the Marquis of Priego for the beautification of this famous Montillan in 1647 and destined, at first, to dominated the currently disappeared San Lorenzo Convent, where this Saint was educated.

The work of Garnelo y Alda

Kept in the Parish Church of Santiago are important artistic prints by Jose Santiago Garnelo y Alda, one of the most prestigious painters of the modernist period at the beginning of last century.

In each one of the pillars which holds up the building we find twelve magnificent pictures by the painted who settled in Montilla. The artist wnted to leave an important example of his work in Montilla, and he chose as a setting, the Parich Church of Santiago, a frame which would later become his own mausoleum. The artist rests, since 1944, in the family vault that he built himself in the crypt situated under the main altarpiece.

The exterior reforms of this temple was inaugurated in 1789 with a neoclassical front with white stone, overseen by Agustín Estepa, putting a stone sculpture of the apostle Santiago, namesake of the church, and made the maestro Sanchez. From the same period there is a tower rising to its right and which replaced a previous tower of the sixteenth century.

The Church of Santiago suffered some amplifications and transformations over the centuries. In 1610 a small neoclassical Church was built which replaced the old main altarpiece, which was subsequently replaced by a big jasper table which had been in the vestry on the occasion of the second Vatican Council. In 1632 along with the enlargement of the presbytery the capitular choir.

They keep important pieces of gold and silver work, such as the gothic silver chalice from 1560, silver chrism from 1576, pallium poles from the carriage which brought Felipe II to Córdoba, come chalices, lecterns, trays, crosses, candlesticks, cruets etc. The silver chiselled processional monstrance of neoclassical style made by the Cordovan silversmith Manuel Aguilar, is dated from 1808 and it was inaugurated by the Bishop of Cordoba Antonio Trebilla.

The old ornaments are also valuable, such as the sacramental brotherhood banner of 1584, sacramental cloak of 1566, chasubles of the seventeenth century, other ornaments from the eighteenth century and documents from 1437, such as the baptismal certificate of San Francisco Solano and a letter to his brother from America, where he spent most of his life preaching.