The Treasure of Guarrazar

Visigothic royal crowns found in 1858, partly scattered and partly lost

On the moonlit night of 25 August 1858, after a stormy one, Francisco Morales and María Pérez were travelling the road to Guadamur with their daughter Escolástica and a donkey when they stopped at the Guarrazar spring, about six miles outside Toledo. Escolástica stepped aside behind an old wall and saw something shining between two flat stones over a square hole. The family dug out gold crosses and other pieces set with precious stones, pearls and glass, rinsed them in the spring and made off with them. A gardener named Domingo de la Cruz had watched them. The next night he dug his own share, and nobody told the authorities.

Within days strange jewelled gold was turning up in the workshops of Toledo's goldsmiths, and much of it was broken up and melted down. A gem dealer, José Navarro, quietly bought fragments and pieced together royal votive crowns, then in 1859 sold them to the Musée de Cluny in Paris. When Cluny published the find, Spain realised what it had lost. Its demands for return were refused. In 1861 de la Cruz offered what remained of his share to Queen Isabel II in exchange for a pension, including the crown of King Suinthila.

The treasure, some 26 votive crowns and crosses dug up between 1858 and 1861, is the high point of Visigothic goldwork and the finest surviving group of early medieval Christian votive offerings. The crowns were never worn. Kings gave them to the church to hang above the altar, as Byzantine mosaics show, and letters dangling from the finest of them spell out RECCESVINTHVS REX OFFERET, King Recceswinth offered this; he reigned from 649 to 672. Its sapphires came from Sri Lanka. The site held graves, one with a priest's gravestone dated 693, and the remains of buildings, and the scholar José Amador de los Ríos, who dug there in 1859, argued that despite their Byzantine form the crowns were made locally.

The losses kept coming. Suinthila's crown was stolen from the Royal Palace in 1921 and has never been found, and more pieces vanished in 1936. In 1941, with France occupied, most of Cluny's share went back to Spain. Today six crowns and five crosses are in the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid, including Recceswinth's, three crowns remain in Paris and one in the Royal Palace.

Why the gold was buried is still argued. The usual answer is that it was hidden from the Muslim conquest early in the 8th century. Recent digs by the archaeologist Juan Manuel Rojas have found a basilica, a palace, a cemetery and a pilgrims' guest house, suggesting Guarrazar was a sanctuary with its own healing spring.