Image: Santa Helena church

Description: Santa Helena church, and the remains of the medieval settlement of Santa Creu de Rodes, Sant Pere de Rodes, Catalonia, Spain. From https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Helena_de_Rodes (translated from Catalan): "Santa Helena de Rodes church is a pre-Romanesque building which can be dated to the ninth century, when it only consisted of a single rectangular nave with a beamed roof and topped on the east by a three-storey truncated pyramidal tower. Around the 10th century, it underwent the first transformation, which corresponds to the construction of a trapezoidal apse covered with a barrel vault and two apsidioles, also trapezoidal, on the north and south façades. Later in the 16th and 17th centuries, two side naves were added, which led to the demolition of the walls of the primitive nave and the creation of new vaults. "In 1725 the temple was in poor condition. The last service here was held in 1820. "In 1930, it was declared a National Monument and around 1935, the Generalitat de Catalunya began restoration work. It was abandoned from then until the decade 1960-1970, when the Center for Archaeological Interventions of Girona carried out occasional works of consolidation and cleaning. Between 1989 and 1991, the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya, together with the Girona Provincial Council, launched a project to excavate and restore the church. The restoration process has focused on simple solutions with minimal impact on the old work, consolidating the facings and roofs, recovering the original openings, re-paving the naves and consolidating the pre-Romanesque paintings and stuccos." From information boards near the church: "Sant Pere de Rodes monumental complex, made up of Sant Pere Monastery, the town of Santa Creu (including Santa Helena church) and Verdera Castle, is in the heart of the Cap de Creus Nature Reserve and is part of the municipality of El Port de la Selva. "The main monument is Sant Pere Monastery. Under its aegis Verdera Castle and the town of Santa Creu flourished. The monastery was founded in the late 9th century during the expansion of the Benedictine monastic order in the Catalan counties promoted by the Frankish monarchy. "The architectural remains of this monumental complex are a unique example of the structure of a mediaeval settlement. The tour of the monastery, the castle and the town gives us a chance to discover in a single place the spaces that housed the three estates on which medieval society was founded: the oratores, who prayed; the bellatores, who went to war; and the laboratores, who did the work." (The complex went into decline from the 17th century, and by the 19th century was largely abandoned.) "Restoration of the complex has been carried out by the Generalitat de Catalunya since 1986. "The urban structure of Santa Creu de Rodes is that of a vila closa, a town where the rear facades of the houses act as a wall and the only access to the interior is through a fortified gateway. The nerve centre was the church square, around which the houses were built, separated by the streets leading to it. The houses are large buildings (between 750 and 1000 square feet), with a ground floor, a first floor and a tiled roof. They often had a courtyard, a garden or a farmyard. Santa Creu de Rodes was a prosperous place where fairs and markets were held, with innkeepers, tailors, bakers, cobblers, blacksmiths and notaries, among others, who offered their services to allcomers, but especially to the pilgrims who flocked to the monastery."
Title: Santa Helena church
Credit: Own work
Author: Alan Mattingly
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
License: CC BY-SA 4.0
License Link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Attribution Required?: Yes