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I have captured the color and light of the Tornabous church early in the morning in this series of unedited photographs for Las Fotos de los Lectores de La Vanguardia.
As explained by the City Council of this town in Urgell, the parish church of Santa Maria “dates from the 12th-13th-14th centuries and is in the Romanesque and popular style.” The image of the Virgin Mary with the Child on the altar is made of polychrome wood and dates from 1349.
It unfolds with a basilica plan with a single nave, with two side chapels and a low choir with a roof of four semicircular arches. The wooden roof is divided into pointed arches.
The apse is polygonal, with an eclectic appearance due to the transformations and extensions it has undergone. In fact, “the only vestige that remains of the primitive church is a transverse nave attached to the foot of the temple, like an atrium, with a barrel vault of pointed arches, with four sections.”
The entrance had a semicircular arch on the west façade and was crowned by a belfry bell tower. The church tower is precisely the protagonist of these images, even with the stork’s nest.
