The plan is very peculiar.[188] The nave is dodecagonal, and has a small central chamber enclosed with solid walls, round which the vaulted nave forms a kind of aisle. This central chamber is of two storeys in height, the lower entered by archways in the cardinal sides, and the upper by a double flight of steps leading to a door in its western side. The upper room is vaulted with a domical roof which has below it four ribs, two parallel north and south, and two parallel east and west, and it retains the original stone altar, arcaded on its sides with a delicately wrought chevron enrichment and chevroned shafts. The upper chapel is lighted by seven little windows opening into the aisle around it. The room below the chapel has also a dome, with ribs on its under side. On the east side of the building are the chancel and two chapels, forming parallel apses, to the south of which is a low steeple, the bottom stage of which is also converted into a chapel. The chapel in the centre of the nave is carried up and finished externally with a pointed roof, whilst the aisle is roofed with a lean-to abutting against its walls. There are pilasters at the angles outside, small windows high up in the walls, and a fine round-arched doorway on the western side. The character of the whole of this interesting church is late Romanesque, and its value is considerable, as being an accurately dated example. It is not now used, the Templars having been suppressed in A.D. 1312. Within a few minutes’ walk of this church of La Vera Cruz (for this is its dedication) is the convent of El Parral, founded in the fifteenth century,[189] by a Marquis de Villena, on a spot once so beautiful as to give rise to the saying, “Los huertos del Parral, Paraiso terrenal,” but now so dreary, desolate, decaying, and desecrated, that the eye refuses to rest on it, and seeks relief by looking rather at the grand view of the town on the rocky heights on the other side of the little valley. Juan Gallego, a native of Segovia, was the master of the works here in 1459, and it is recorded that before beginning to construct the convent he collected all the waters from the hill above its site, and distributed them by aqueducts for the service of the convent. The Capilla mayor was not commenced until A.D. 1472, in which year a contract was drawn up with Bonifacio and Juan de Guas, of Segovia, and Pedro Polido, of Toledo, binding them to complete the work within three years, for the sum of 400,000 maravedis. Then the tribune of the Coro was found to be too low for the taste of the monks, and it was taken down and rebuilt by Juan de Ruesga, of Segovia, for 125,000 maravedis; and by a contract signed in July, 1494, he bound himself to complete the work before the end of the same year. After this, in 1529, Juan Campero, whose name has already been mentioned in connexion with the rebuilding of the cloister of the cathedral, undertook to raise the tower twenty-nine feet.[190]