Valladolid (Spanish: [baʎaðoˈlið] ( listen)) is the capital city of the autonomous region of Castile and León and the Province of Valladolid in north-western Spain. It is situated at the confluence of the Pisuerga and Esgueva rivers, and located within three winegrowing regions: Ribera del Duero, Rueda and Cigales. It has a population of 311,501 people, making it Spain's 13th most populous municipality and northwestern Spain's biggest city. Its metropolitan area ranks 20th in Spain with a population of 413,605 people in 23 municipalities (INE 2011).
Valladolid was originally settled in pre-Roman times by the Celtic Vaccaei people, and later the Romans themselves. It remained a small settlement until being re-established by King Alfonso VI of Castile as a Lordship for the Count Pedro Ansúrez in 1072. It grew to prominence in the Middle Ages as the seat of the Court of Castile and being endowed with fairs and different institutions as a collegiate church, University, Royal Court and Chancery and the Casa de la Moneda[disambiguation needed]. The Catholic Monarchs, Isabel I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, married in Valladolid in 1469 and established it as the capital of the Kingdom of Castile and later of united Spain. Christopher Columbus died in Valladolid in 1506, while authors Francisco de Quevedo and Miguel de Cervantes lived and worked in the city. It was also a cultural centre in the Spanish Renaissance, although a fire in 1561 forced Phillip II to move the capital to Madrid. It briefly returned to Valladolid under Phillip III between 1601 and 1606, before returning indefinitely to Madrid. The city then declined until the arrival of the railroad in the 19th century, and with its industrialisation, already in the 20th century.
San Pablo is an Isabelline Gothic-Plateresque church in Valladolid, in western Spain, built by Cardinal Juan de Torquemada between 1445 and 1468. Kings Philip II and Philip IV of Spain were baptized in the church.
The church construction was commissioned by Cardinal Torquemada to replace a previous church, which had a timber ceiling and was annexed to a Dominican convent, founded in 1270. After Torquemada's death, bishop Alonso de Burgos funded the building of the cloister, refectory, and lower façade, as well as of the adjacent Colegio de San Gregorio with its funerary chapel. Artists who worked to the church in this period include the Spanish-Flemish Juan Guas and Simón de Colonia. Around 1550, Cardinal Juan Garcia Loaysa, confessor of Charles V, built the sacristy, covered with a dome decorated by stars, coat of arms of the order and figures of Dominican saints. The nave features rib vaults, supported by corbels in Renaissance style, added around 1540.