Basilica of Our Lady of the Pine Tree: A Catalan Gothic Church in Barcelona
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- Spain
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Crown of Aragon, Spanish
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Basilica
On this page19 sections
History
The Basilica of Our Lady of the Pine Tree is a Catholic parish church in Barcelona, Spain, built in the Catalan Gothic tradition between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Dedicated to the Virgin Mary, it belongs to the Archdiocese of Barcelona and is also associated with the titles Our Lady and Saint Mary of the Kings, the latter referring to an early altarpiece showing the Adoration of the Magi.
Early Christian and Medieval Parish
A Christian church is traditionally said to have stood on this site as early as 413. The earliest documented church, however, dates from 987. It stood west of Barcelona and outside the city walls, probably as a Romanesque building. A cemetery connected with it is recorded in 1074, and by 1188 the site had become an ecclesiastical parish.
The earlier church was replaced by the present building. Construction began around 1319 or 1320 and continued until 1391. The Chapel of Saint Clement and Saint Lawrence is mentioned in 1321, while work had reached the fourth bay of the nave by 1332. The nave received its vault during the second half of the fourteenth century, and the completed church was inaugurated on 17 June 1453.
Expansion and Damage in the Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries
Peter the Ceremonious contributed to the construction of the bell tower in 1379. Later work on the tower was directed by Bartomeu Mas from 1460 until his death in 1497. The Chapel of the Puríssima Sang, built in an adjoining structure, was completed in 1486.
The Catalan earthquake of 1428 severely damaged the church. Its rose window collapsed, causing several deaths. The building suffered further destruction during the bombardments and siege of Barcelona in 1714, part of the War of the Spanish Succession, an early-eighteenth-century conflict over the Spanish throne. The explosion of a nearby powder magazine damaged the church, presbytery, side chapel, stained-glass windows, main altarpiece, and other furnishings. Repairs began in 1717 under the master builder Joan Fiter.
Restoration and Religious Associations
Francisco de Paula del Villar y Lozano directed the first major restoration between 1863 and 1884. The work included the chapel roofs and both the front and rear facades, while Baroque interior decoration was removed. Further restoration followed around 1915. Pope Pius XI granted the church the status of a minor papal basilica in 1926. This title gives a church special papal ecclesiastical status because of its religious or historical importance; it does not make the church a cathedral. The basilica was declared a Spanish cultural-heritage monument on 13 June 1931.
The church is also associated with Saint Joaquina de Vedruna. She was baptized there on 16 April 1783 and married there on 24 March 1799. She later founded the Institute of the Sisters of Carmelites of Charity.
War, Reconstruction, and Modern Conservation
During the Spanish Civil War, the basilica was deliberately burned in 1936. The fire gutted the interior and destroyed the high altar, altarpieces, statues, choir stalls installed in 1868, the 1808 organ, and other furnishings. The Virgin and several other images were saved. Repairs and reconstruction began in the 1950s under Josep Maria Jujol.
The rose window was reconstructed between 1939 and 1943 by Jujol, using photographs and studies of rose windows at the monasteries of Pedralbes and Sant Cugat. A further restoration directed by Alfred Pastor and Xavier Guitart took place in 2009 and 2010, with support from the Government of Catalonia and the Archbishop of Barcelona.
Musical activity at the basilica is recorded from the seventeenth century until 1936. It resumed in 1990 on the initiative of Jordi Sacasas and David Malet. The treasury opened to the public in 2011, with a permanent exhibition presenting the basilica’s history, architecture, daily life, and associated historical personalities.
Remains
The basilica is a large single-nave Catalan Gothic church, a regional Gothic tradition known for broad interiors, strong buttressing, and spacious halls or single naves. It measures approximately 54 metres in length and 16.5 metres in width, while the nave rises about 27 metres. Seven rectangular bays form the nave, which is covered by a vault and terminates in an apse. Side chapels occupy the spaces between the Gothic buttresses.
Facade and Nave
Main Entrance and Rose Window
The main facade contains a fourteenth-century Gothic rose window approximately 10 metres across and described as having twelve arms. The original window was destroyed in the 1936 fire, and the present rose window was reconstructed by Josep Maria Jujol between 1939 and 1943.
Below it, a pointed Gothic arch forms the principal entrance. Two small columns divide the tympanum, the decorated area enclosed by the arch, into three arched sections. The central section contains a statue of the Virgin and Child, with the arms of Barcelona and the parish above it. Reliefs of the Virgin Mary and the Apostles extend along the lower edge of the arch, while blind arcades and a horizontal moulding frame the entrance. Two substantial octagonal towers flank the facade.
Side and Rear Facades
The side facade is supported by prominent buttresses that carry the arches and vault of the nave. Pointed stained-glass windows are set between them. At its centre, the Door of the Ave Maria formerly opened toward a large moat, now Plaça de Sant Josep Oriol. Its Gothic archivolts, or moulded bands following the curve of an arch, incorporate a Romanesque impost, a projecting block from which an arch begins. The sculpted capitals and impost probably came from the earlier church and were reused in the later doorway.
The rear facade and apse also have buttresses and pointed windows. A rear door dated 1578 connects with the sacristy. It once gave access to the area behind the presbytery, the part of the church surrounding the high altar, and was substantially altered during Villar’s nineteenth-century restoration.
Bell Tower and Interior Arrangement
Bell Tower
An independent octagonal bell tower stands beside the southern side of the apse. It is 54 metres high, with walls 3.55 metres thick at the base. Six bells remain in the tower. The largest, Antònia, measures 1.4 metres in diameter and weighs 1,806 kilograms.
Apse and High Altar
The apse is covered by a radial vault that also incorporates the first bay of the surrounding chapels. Seven further chapels extend along the remainder of the nave. The present high altar, made of alabaster, was designed by Joaquim de Ros i de Ramis in 1967. A statue of the Virgin Mary by Enric Monjo stands in the presbytery; completed in 1973, it is 3.3 metres high.
The presbytery has held several successive altarpieces. A fourteenth-century work was replaced by an altarpiece painted by Joan de Borgonya between 1508 and 1514. That altarpiece was destroyed during the damage of 1714. A replacement made in 1736 disappeared during the reforms of 1868, when Villar installed a neo-Gothic altarpiece. The latter was destroyed in the 1936 fire.
Choir Stalls and Tomb
Rococo choir stalls designed by Josep Mas i Dordal were made in 1771. They were replaced by neo-Gothic stalls in 1868, but those later stalls were destroyed in the 1936 fire. The earlier Rococo stalls were reinstated in 1986.
The tomb of Arnau Ferrer, a shipmaster who died during the siege of Catania in 1394, is set into the wall on the right side of the apse. Its stone sarcophagus is supported by two lions.
Chapels and Devotional Art
Chapels of Our Lady and Saint Joseph Oriol
The Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows was formerly dedicated to Our Lady of Grace. The Chapel of Our Lady of Montserrat contains the burial place of Saint Joseph Oriol, a Barcelona priest who served at the church from 1687 to 1702 and was later canonized by the Catholic Church.
The Chapel of Saint Joseph Oriol received an altarpiece for his beatification in 1806 and an altar by Joan Martorell after his canonization in 1909. The ensemble included a statue by Venancio Vallmitjana and paintings by Joan Llimona, but it was destroyed in 1936. An older statue of the saint by Ramón Amadeu is now associated with the chapel.
Chapels of the Immaculate Conception and Saint Michael
The Chapel of the Immaculate Conception was formerly the Chapel of Saint Michael. It once housed a Saint Michael altarpiece painted by Jaume Huguet between 1455 and 1460, parts of which are preserved in the National Art Museum of Catalonia. The chapel also contains the tomb of the painter Antonio Viladomat, dated 1775.
The Chapel of Saint Michael is associated with the Retailers’ Guild and contains a late-eighteenth-century sculpture of Saint Michael by Salvador Gurri. The Chapel of Our Lady of the Forsaken contains an eighteenth-century work by Ramón Amadeu.
Chapel of the Puríssima Sang
The Chapel of the Puríssima Sang was completed in the adjoining building in 1486. It served as the community’s chapter house, a room for communal meetings and business, until it was ceded to the Archconfraternity of the Puríssima Sang in 1547. An archconfraternity is a Catholic confraternity with a special ecclesiastical status. The confraternity financed a Baroque altarpiece by Joan Grau in 1670, and the present altarpiece is a copy of the one destroyed by fire in 1936. Local tradition associates the chapel with miraculous cures performed by Saint Joseph Oriol.
Treasury and Surviving Glass
The basilica’s treasury preserves the 1498 Lignum Crucis, a relic traditionally identified as a fragment of the True Cross. It also contains the enamelled chalice known as the Good Chalice, donated by Felip de Malla in 1431, together with paintings of the Adoration of the Magi and the Holy Family, works by Juan Carreño de Miranda and Antonio Viladomat, and a collection of fourteenth-century shields.
The oldest surviving stained-glass windows date from 1718. They include a window depicting the Adoration of the Magi above the Door of the Ave Maria, attributed to Antoni Viladomat. The treasury’s permanent exhibition places these objects within the basilica’s history and explains its architecture and associated people.
The Pine Tree Tradition
The basilica’s name is traditionally connected with an image of the Virgin supposedly found in the trunk or heart of a pine tree. A pine was planted before the main entrance in 1568 and survived until 1802, when it died after a soldier drove a bayonet into its trunk. Other interpretations regard the pine as a symbol of the Virgin’s purity or as an emblem of humanity’s aspiration toward heaven.
