Church Transfiguration of the Lord (Millares)

The apse of the parish church of Millares sits on the plot of the old mosque, located between the farmstead and the surrounding agricultural land. Entry to it was through a passageway, which has been preserved. It was consecrated as a church after the forced baptisms of the Moors as new Christians or moriscos in 1525 and it was assigned to the rectory of Dos Aguas. In 1535, the parish was separated and made an independent parish, under the devotion of the Virgin of the Assumption, which was changed to the current devotion in the 17th century.

Following the expulsion of the Moors in 1609, the new settlers, Old Christians, erected their church in a rustic style: a rectangular floor plan divided by lowered transverse arches, with a pendentive dome covering each section; a flat presbytery headwall, and a choir at the foot of the gable end, over the entrance door. This first church of the children of “re-settlers” (second half of the 17th century) became too small midway through the 18th century, therefore it was extended in 1789 with spacious side chapels opened between the buttresses. Some of them have beautiful bases of Valencian ceramic from the period. In 1923, the priest Vicente Peris Carbonell obtained a grant to refurbish the church and it was restored again a few years ago.

The main altar contains a neo-baroque altarpiece made of stone, from the post-war period, as are the statuettes it houses: the Christ of Health, flanked by San Roque and San Blas. According to popular tradition, the venerated Christ miraculously came up the Júcar River in 1547, and ended an epidemic that was decimating the population. The original statuette of the patron saint was destroyed in the social revolution of 1936 and has been replaced with the current replica.

The façade (facing the same direction as the qibla of the mosque, the southeast), has barely any decoration: a lintel door, with an upper niche housing a Heart of Jesus. The bell tower, annexed to the right side of the façade, dates back to the 19th century. It has three levels with little decoration and an original crenelated top. It houses four bells, going from smallest to largest: the treble or Small bell, a work by Los Hermanos Roses in Silla, dating from 1945; the New bell or that of the Virgen of Carmbel, by Los Hermanos Roses of Valencia, from 1930 approximately (brought from the Chapel of El Salto in 1998); that of the Transfiguration, from 1850; and the Large bell, by Los Hermanos Roses in Silla, from 1945.