Solsona Cathedral: A Romanesque, Gothic, and Baroque Cathedral in Spain
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Spain
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Crown of Aragon, Spanish
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Cathedral
On this page18 sections
History
Solsona Cathedral is a Catholic cathedral in Spain dedicated to Saint Mary, and it serves as the seat of the Diocese of Solsona. The complex developed from the late twelfth to the eighteenth century, combining Romanesque, Gothic, and Baroque phases. Its history began with a canonical monastery church consecrated in 1163, although two earlier temples had occupied the site, one mentioned in the tenth century and another consecrated in 1070.
From the monastery church to the Gothic cathedral
The monastery was attached to the Romanesque church and occupied the site of the present Episcopal Palace. The Gothic replacement was begun around 1280 under the provost Ponç de Vilaró, a senior ecclesiastical official who could oversee a cathedral or collegiate institution. Exterior work is recorded from 1299. Construction began west of the Romanesque church, and in 1330 the wall closing the older building was demolished so that the Gothic nave could be extended. The project then remained unfinished for a prolonged period.
The Romanesque cloister was initiated by the provost Bernat de Palma and built by Gilabert of Toulouse, a prominent sculptor associated with the Toulouse Romanesque tradition. Around 1620, the Romanesque cloisters were dismantled in part, and the surviving cloister was substantially altered in the eighteenth century. Its floor was lowered, the lower gallery was rebuilt, and the former access doorway was blocked.
Cathedral status and seventeenth-century completion
In 1593, Pope Clement VIII established the Diocese of Solsona at the request of Philip II of Castile. The decision was partly intended to prevent the spread of Huguenot ideas across the French frontier. Huguenots were French Protestants, chiefly associated with Calvinism. With the creation of the diocese, the church became a cathedral, the principal church of the bishop’s ecclesiastical district.
Building resumed in 1623, when the chapter commissioned the Barcelona master builder Claudi Casals. He constructed the apse and western facade, and the high altar was consecrated in 1627. The Gothic cathedral was completed in 1630 with the construction of the presbytery, although enlargement and Baroque work continued through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At the initiative of Bishop Rafael Lasala i Locela, a Baroque screen and the Gate of Saint Augustine were built in the eighteenth century. This intervention replaced and destroyed the large Romanesque main portal.
Fire, reconstruction, and preservation
During the Napoleonic occupation in 1810, the cathedral was burned and much of its furnishings was lost, including the high-altarpiece. In 1854, Josep Oriol Mestres designed a Neo-Gothic altarpiece dedicated to the Assumption, incorporating paintings by Claudi Lorenzale. The altarpiece was destroyed during the 1936 Revolution, but the paintings survived, were recovered in 2002, and are now displayed in a side chapel.
The Virgin of the Cloister was hidden more than once during periods of danger. During the thirteenth-century arrival of the Albigensians, adherents of Cathar Christianity, the image was concealed in the newly completed cloister well to protect it from desecration. During the Civil War of 1936, it was hidden in the bell tower and later intended for evacuation to France. Instead, it remained concealed in the garage of the Episcopal Palace in Vic. After the war, Enric Monjo i Garriga restored the damaged figure of the Child.
The cathedral received national historical and cultural-heritage protection as a National Cultural Heritage Site and a Spanish Historic Heritage Site. It was also granted the title of minor basilica by decree on 9 July 1953. A master plan carried out its first phase in 1997 and 1998, including restoration of the facades. The festival honoring the Virgin of the Cloister remains Solsona’s major festival and is held from 7 to 9 September under a formal protocol intended to preserve its historical folkloric traditions.
Remains
The cathedral complex brings together a Romanesque church and cloister, a predominantly Gothic church, and later Baroque additions. The principal Gothic church has a high, spacious single nave covered by a ribbed vault, with side chapels set between the buttresses. Most of the surviving structure dates from the fourteenth century, while later work altered the western end, presbytery, chapels, entrances, and cloister.
Romanesque structures
Apses and surviving church fabric
The earlier Romanesque church was built in two phases. The first created a three-aisled church with a higher central nave, windows that illuminated it, three semicircular apses, and interior arcading. The second phase added the bell tower above the right lateral nave and an atrium leading to the cloisters. The surviving apsidal remains include semicircular apses with Lombard decoration, a style of small exterior arcading. One apse window has archivolts, bands of moulding following the curve of the arch, together with two columns and carved capitals. The northern apsidiole, or small apse, rises above the others.
The apse behind the Gothic presbytery conceals the three Romanesque apses, which were reused as sacristies. Other surviving elements include blocked windows in the north facade, two figures at an entrance, and a transverse nave with a pointed barrel vault visible from the organ-blower room. The former Pantocrator, a representation of Christ as universal ruler, is now in a museum.
Bell tower
The Romanesque bell tower originally had three externally defined levels. On every face and at each level, its openings alternated between single-arched and paired windows, all with carved capitals. A 25.92-metre stone staircase runs through a passage with an ascending barrel vault. At the second level, the stair is interrupted by a lowered dome supported on squinches, structural devices that carry a dome over a square or polygonal space. In the sixteenth century, the tower was extended to a total height of 35.12 metres, and its windows were blocked.
The tower now contains nine bells: six liturgical bells in the windows and three clock bells on the roof. The Major Bell is described as the eighth-largest bell in Catalonia.
Cloister entrance and gallery
The cloister doorway is associated with the Lleida school. It has a splayed arch, columns, carved capitals, and geometric decoration. After being blocked, it was rediscovered between 1949 and 1951. The cloister retains its Romanesque vault and an upper gallery in the Late Gothic style, while the arches and piers of the lower gallery were replaced with Neoclassical ones during the eighteenth-century alterations.
Romanesque window
A Romanesque window dating from around the turn of the eleventh and twelfth centuries was relocated to the wall closing the Gothic nave. It consists of two semicircular-arched windows enclosed by a larger arch. A central pilaster divides the composition and supports a double arch with checkerboard voussoirs, the wedge-shaped stones forming an arch. The imposts also have checkerboard decoration, the capitals carry floral motifs, and cross-shaped designs fill the spandrel. The composition is described as unique, with no known parallel.
The window was damaged by fire during the Peninsular War. Heat and the sedimentary stone caused disintegration, cracking, fissures, flaking, and spalling. Soot-like deposits, lime splashes, and debris also accumulated on its surface. Beam sockets and plaster remnants record later alterations made when the window was enclosed within the Episcopal Palace. The Catalonia Centre for the Restoration of Movable Cultural Property restored it in 2015.
Gothic church and later additions
Gothic nave and western end
The Gothic nave incorporates two building periods. The earlier capitals are small and typically Gothic, with heraldic shields belonging to the principal promoters. The later capitals are much larger and have stylized vegetal decoration. Claudi Casals added a lower western bay covered by a barrel vault and constructed a new facade. The Baroque entrance portal was added in 1768.
Presbytery and chapels
On either side of the presbytery are transept-like chapels. The Parish Chapel on the left was built between 1668 and 1673 and later enlarged between 1746 and 1772 with the Chapel of Mercy. The chapel contains a Baroque altarpiece dedicated to the Virgin of Mercy. On the right, the Chapel of the Virgin of the Cloister was built in 1727 and later enlarged by a devotional chamber designed by August Font between 1902 and 1910.
Gate of Saint Augustine
The Gate of Saint Augustine is set in the south wall and protected by a Baroque screen dated 1780. Its unpainted stone relief tympanum represents Saint Augustine in ecstasy. A baptistery formerly stood beside the portal and was demolished during the 1936 war.
Sculpture, furnishings, and memorials
Virgin of the Cloister
The Virgin of the Cloister is a late-twelfth-century stone sculpture 105 centimetres high. The Virgin sits on a throne with the Child on her lap, while two monsters appear beneath her feet. The stone has darkened with age. The sculpture is venerated in the chamber of the Chapel of the Virgin of the Cloister.
Historiated column
A twelfth-century historiated column, a column decorated with figurative or symbolic sculpture, and its capital form a single sculptural unit. The column bears male and female figures, while the capital has three tiers of acanthus leaves. The work follows the Toulouse style and was produced by an artist from Gilabert’s workshop. The column is 117 centimetres high and the capital is 28 centimetres high.
The sculpture originally came from the cloisters, probably from a paired window whose remains survive above the present cloister entrance. After the Romanesque cloisters were dismantled around 1620, it was reused as building material and later recovered from retaining walls near the present diocesan seminary. It was exhibited at the Barcelona Universal Exhibition in 1929.
Organ and sarcophagus
The organ was made in 1853 by the Solsona organ builders Bordons. It incorporates Baroque elements from earlier organs and is regarded as one of Catalonia’s monumental organs.
The sarcophagus of Ponç II de Vilaró consists of a coffin and lid. The lid carries a recumbent figure of Ponç II dressed as a bishop, wearing a tunic, rochet, mitre, and crozier, with his head resting on a geometrically decorated cushion. Two small serpent-like animals appear at his feet. Repeated castellated forms, including crenellated towers, decorate the lid and coffin, surrounding and continuing an inscribed funerary text.
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