Saint Teresa of Ávila's birthplace

Can you imagine visiting the exact spot where one of the great writers of the Spanish language was born? In Ávila you can, because in the 17th century a church and a convent of Discalced Carmelites were built over the family home of Teresa of Ávila, and where the rooms in which she was born in 1515 once stood there are now two chapels, the Carmen chapel and the chapel of the Saint.

Teresa of Ávila was a Carmelite nun who founded convents all over Spain, but she is also one of the great writers of the Spanish Golden Age. In The Book of Her Life she told her own story, starting from her childhood in Ávila, and in The Way of Perfection and The Interior Castle she wrote a guide to the spiritual life for her nuns. For her work, in 1970 she became the first woman to be named a Doctor of the Church (a title the Pope grants to very few saints for the value of what they taught and wrote). And it's no coincidence that Women Writers' Day (Día de las Escritoras) is held every October around the anniversary of her death.

As well as the church, the complex keeps part of the original garden and a Relics Room, and since 1999 the convent's great vaulted crypt has housed the Saint Teresa Museum. Don't miss it if you visit Ávila!