Online Paintings

The Treasure of Guarrazar is an archeological find composed of twenty-six votive crowns and gold crosses that had at first been offered to the Roman Catholic Church by the Kings of the Visigoths in the seventh century in Hispania, as a gesture of the orthodoxy of their faith and their submission to the religious hierarchy. The most valuable of all is the votive crown of king Reccesuinth with its blue sapphires from the former Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, and spectacular pendilia. Though the treasure is now divided and much has disappeared, it represents the best surviving group of Early Medieval Christian votive offerings, and was probably comparable to groups deposited in other major European shrines that have now disappeared.

The treasure, which represents the high point of Visigothic goldsmith's work, was dug between 1858 and 1861 in an orchard called Guarrazar, in Guadamur, very close to Toledo, Spain. The treasure was divided, with some objects going to the Musee de Cluny in Paris and the rest to the armouries of the Palacio Real in Madrid. Subsequently most of the Treasure of Guarrazar was stolen and has disappeared.

The Visigothic period (409-711) provides an interesting chapter in the history of Guadamur.
In August 1858, heavy storms in Guadamur uncovered a series of tombs at the site of the gardens of Guarrazar. These remains were found by neighbours Francisco Morales and Maria Perez.


The jewellery found at Guarrazar is part of a continuous tradition of Iberian metalworking that goes back to prehistoric times. These Visigothic works were influenced heavily by the Byzantines, but the techniques of gem encrustation found at Guarrazar were practised throughout the Germanic world and the style of the lettering was Germanic too. The crowns, however, were purely Byzantine in form and never meant to be worn. They were gifts to the church, to be hung above the altar.
These findings, together with other of some neighbors and with the archaeological excavation of the Ministry of Public Works and the Royal Academy of History (April 1859), formed a group consisting of:

• National Archaeological Museum of Spain: six crowns, five crosses, a pendant and remnants of foil and channel.

• Royal Palace of Madrid: a crown and a gold cross and a stone engraved with the Annunciation. A crown, and other fragments of a tiller with a crystal ball were stolen from the Royal Palace of Madrid in 1921 and its whereabouts are still unknown.

• National Museum of the middle Ages, Paris: three crowns, two crosses, links and gold pendants.

There were also many fragments of sculptures and the remains of a building, perhaps a Roman sanctuary or place of purification. After its dedication to Christian worship as a church or oratory, it housed a number of graves. A skeleton lying on a bed of lime and sand was found in the best preserved grave. This slate is now in the National Archeological Museum of Spain in Madrid. The inscription on the Sonnica cross, a piece preserved in Paris, gives an indication about the name of this church.