Santa María del Naranco
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- The consecration inscription names Ramiro I and his wife, Queen Paterna, and says they renewed a building already worn out by great age.
- Ramiro I had won his throne by fighting the noble Nepotian, and a monumental hall overlooking Oviedo helped proclaim his shaky legitimacy.
- Scholars still debate its purpose: an audience hall is the favoured reading, while a hunting lodge has been ruled out and a royal mausoleum has been proposed.
- The building probably became a church after the chancel of neighbouring San Miguel de Lillo collapsed, and was recorded as Santa María by about 1150.
- The altar stone in the eastern belvedere originally came from San Miguel de Lillo.
- Between 1931 and 1934 all later medieval and Baroque additions, including a parish house and a sacristy of 1697, were demolished to recover the ninth-century form.
- Small chambers above the belvederes could be reached only with a ladder and are thought to have held the royal treasure.
- One side room on the lower floor keeps a stone basin and has been read, controversially, as a bath or a cistern.
- The hall is only about 20 metres long, yet its barrel vault rests on six transverse arches set on carved brackets.
Why it is worth it
On the southern slope of Mount Naranco, looking down over Oviedo, stands a small rectangular building that is one of the most remarkable survivals of ninth-century Europe. It was built for Ramiro I, king of Asturias, not as a church but as a royal palace or hall of recreation, part of a group of royal buildings on the edge of his capital; an altar inscription dates its consecration to 23 June 848. Only in the twelfth century was it turned into a church dedicated to St Mary. The Asturian kingdom was then a small Christian realm on the northern edge of the Iberian peninsula, and its builders developed a style of their own, known as Asturian pre-Romanesque, of which this is the finest example. It has been a national monument since 1885 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985.
The building has two storeys. The low lower floor, divided into a central hall and two side rooms, is often called the crypt. A double external staircase climbs to the upper floor, which repeats the same plan: a long central hall lined with blind arches on columns, and at each end an open belvedere or mirador reached through a triple arcade. What amazed contemporaries, and still impresses, is the stone barrel vault over the hall, carried on transverse arches that line up with buttresses outside, a structural logic that anticipates Romanesque building by two centuries. An eleventh-century chronicle described it as a palace "without wood", vaulted above and below.
The decoration is as distinctive as the structure. Columns are carved with twisted rope mouldings, a local motif, and topped with cube-shaped capitals of Byzantine inspiration carved with animals and human figures inside frames of cord. Along the walls, 32 carved medallions, each different, show beasts, birds, grapes and fantastic creatures in a tradition inherited from Visigothic art, and above them panels show figures carrying loads and horsemen with swords. From the miradors the view across the valley to the city is worth lingering over.
A hundred metres further up the hill stands its companion, San Miguel de Lillo, built for the same king, and the two are visited together.
Getting there
The monuments are about 3 km from central Oviedo. City buses run up the hill to within a short walk of them, and on foot it is an uphill walk of about 3 km from the cathedral along the Avenida de los Monumentos. Asturias Airport (OVD) is about 25 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The church of Saint Mary at Mount Naranco is a pre-Romanesque Asturian building on the slope of Mount Naranco situated 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) from Oviedo, northern Spain. Ramiro I of Asturias ordered it to be built as a royal palace, part of a larger complex that also incorporated the nearby church of San Miguel de Lillo, 100 meters away. The palace was completed in 842 and had in part a religious function, being consecrated in 848. Its structural features, such as the barrel vault—with transverse ribs corresponding one-to-one with contraforts at the exterior, make it a clear precursor of the Romanesque construction. The exterior decorations, as well as the use of stilted arches, mark the intended verticality of the composition.
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