Romanesque Church of Sant Climent, built in the early 1100s, in Vall de Boí village of Taüll, Catalonia, Spain. The church has three semicircular eastern apses, all with simple Lombard decoration and round-arched slit windows, and an Italian-style belfry.
Taüll, Vall de Boí, Lleida, Catalonia, Spain: three semicircular apses built of stone rubble and cut granite of the early-12th century Church of Sant Climent de Taüll, a jewel of Early Romanesque architecture with a soaring, Italian-style belfry. It is one of two Early Romanesque churches consecrated on consecutive days in December 1123 in Taüll. Both churches were built with Italian-style belfries and three semicircular eastern apses. The apses all have round-headed narrow slit windows and the larger central apse also has a porthole window on either side. Simple arched Lombard decoration runs below each roofline: groups of four arches on the central apse and groups of three on its companions. The church, consecrated in 1123, is a basilica combining Romanesque, Lombardic and Byzantine architecture and is the biggest and best preserved of the many ancient places of worship in the Vall de Boí. Nine churches, plus chapels and hermitages, form the most dense concentration of the early Romanesque style in Europe, protected as a UNESCO World Heritage site since November 2000. Christianity thrived in high Pyrenean valleys while much of Spain was under Moorish occupation. Silver deposits enriched local dignitaries, who employed nomadic skilled master builders and sculptors, known as Lombardi, to construct churches in fashionable imported styles. Inside the church, polychrome frescoes include a vivid Christ Pancreator or Christ in Majesty by an artist known only as the Master of Taüll. The powerful image now on the central apse is a faithful replica, as the original painting was moved, for its protection and preservation, to the National Museum of Catalan Art in Barcelona.
Size: 4256px × 2832px
Location: Taüll, Vall de Boí, Lleida, Catalonia, Spain
Photo credit: © Terence Kerr / Alamy / Afripics
License: Royalty Free
Model Released: No
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