Església de Sant Martí (Church of Saint Martin), a medieval Romanesque church at La Cortinada in the Ordino Valley in Andorra. The church was built in the 1000s and 1100s AD and stands amid rugged but well-wooded slopes in the eastern Pyrenees.
La Cortinada, Ordino Valley, Andorra: a two-storey bell tower with round-arched openings stands at the southwestern corner of the Església de Sant Martí de la Cortinada (Church of Saint Martin), founded in the late-11th or early 12th century as a village church in the beautiful Coll d’Ordino of the eastern Pyrenees. Despite structural and internal alterations in the Baroque era of the 1600s and 1700s, the church retains its rustic Romanesque external appearance, with its gabled stone rubble south facade pierced by a circular oculus above a typically Romanesque doorway. St Martin’s, here seen against a cloudless deep blue sky, stands amid rugged wooded slopes in northern Andorra. The current structure, under a wooden roof covered with fish scale tiles, has a quadrangular plan with side altars and a square apse to the north. The south wall corresponds to the old wall of the Romanesque nave, but of the Romanesque north wall, the section corresponding to the presbytery is the only remnant to survive. Inside, rediscovered wall-paintings that once decorated the nave of the original church have been attributed to a 12th century artist known only as the Master of La Cortinada. They provide good examples of Romanesque Andorran fresco art. Wrought iron railings in the church are a reminder of the iron industry that thrived in the Ordino Valley for centuries.
Size: 2832px × 4256px
Location: La Cortinada, Ordino Valley, Andorra
Photo credit: © Terence Kerr / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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