Iglesia El Rosario
Interesting facts
- The site once held San Salvador's original parish church and, after the diocese was created, the city's first cathedral.
- Church authorities at first refused Rubén Martínez's radical plans, so the architect sought approval from the Vatican, which authorised the project.
- The colourful stained glass along the east and west sides was created by the Spanish Dominican friar Domingo Iturgaiz.
- Martínez Bulnes himself is buried in the crypt of the church he designed, alongside the independence hero José Matías Delgado.
- In 1972, while the new building was still being finished, the site was declared a Historic Place of the Republic for its role in Salvadoran history.
- Martínez's Stations of the Cross, in black iron set on cement and pumice, end with a figure of the risen Christ worked in spiralling iron.
- In the Eucharistic chapel a band of stained glass forms the shapes of fish, while a square of red glass glows behind the tabernacle.
- The victims of a 1970s massacre in Plaza Libertad were buried inside the church by people sheltering there; a plaque and 21 iron crosses above the portico recall them.
- The new church replaced an earlier wooden building that had become too small for its congregation.
Why it is worth it
From outside, El Rosario in central San Salvador looks almost like a hangar: a long, low half-cylinder of bare concrete on the east side of Plaza Libertad. Inside, the effect reverses completely. A single nave without a column in sight rises under a vault that steps upward in tiers, and the gaps between the steps are filled with stained glass, so that bands of red, blue, yellow and green light fall across the altar and the benches as the sun moves.
The church is the work of the Salvadoran architect and sculptor Rubén Martínez Bulnes. He was asked for designs in 1962 by the Dominican friar Domingo Iturgaiz, and the building went up between 1964 and 1971. Martínez took his cue from the Second Vatican Council, which called for churches that let the congregation follow and take part in the liturgy; instead of the traditional cross-shaped plan he made one open, curving space about 80 metres long, 24 metres wide and 22 metres high at the crown of the arch, where nothing blocks the view of the altar. The stepped vault is often read as a stairway towards heaven. The glass came from France, and the furnishings continue the modern language, with Stations of the Cross in wrought iron and contemporary religious sculpture. The building is usually described as a landmark of Latin American modernist and brutalist church architecture.
El Rosario also carries the memory of Salvadoran independence. It holds the remains of José Matías Delgado, the priest who was a leading figure of the 1811 independence movement in Central America and is honoured as a father of the nation. During the civil war of 1980–1992 the church served as a gathering place and refuge for Christian communities and human rights defenders. It was declared a cultural asset of El Salvador in 2015.
San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, lies in a valley below the San Salvador volcano. The church stands in the historic centre, around the plazas where the city's cathedral, National Palace and National Theatre are also found.
Getting there
El Rosario faces Plaza Libertad in the historic centre of San Salvador. The nearest airport is Ilopango International (ILS), about 7 km to the east; the country's main international gateway, El Salvador International Airport (SAL), lies roughly 40 km to the south-east, near the Pacific coast.
On these lists
13.69737, -89.18851per Wikidata