San Salvador Church, Villaviciosa, Spain

Iglesia de San Salvador is a Romanesque-style church located in the town of Fuentes, Villaviciosa. The church of San Salvador is documented in 1021 (via an inscription) as due to the patronate of Diego Perez, and consecrated by Bishop Adaganeo I. The church appears to have been built in the 12th-century. The diocese of Villaviciosa is mentioned in 1385 by the bishop of Oviedo, Gutierre de Toledo. The temple is mentioned in 1625 in documents of the Monastery of San Pelayo of Oviedo. In the 18th century it was a parish church. The church was declared an Artistic Historical Monument in 1931. During the Spanish civil war the church was burned, it was reconstructed in its prior form in 1950.

A processional crucifix, a bejeweled silver cross, with gilded wood, semiprecious stones and a Roman cameo from the church, one of the pinnacles of goldsmithery in medieval Asturian, were stolen in 1898 and sold to French and then American private collectors. In 1917 J. Pierpont Morgan donated it to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where it now is exhibited.

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Religious sites in Spain

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Lorenzo Miravalles de Aldecoa (4 years ago)
Belonging to the El Palacio de Fuentes complex, it is one of the most prominent Asturian pre-Romanesque symbols.

Pisadiel (4 years ago)
Romanesque church of San Salvador de Fuentes (1021), in El Muriel, Fuentes (Villaviciosa, Asturies). We would be here before the church of a family monastery of the s. XI, Romanesque -very influenced by Asturian pre-Romanesque-, founded by Diego Pepici and his wife Mansuara; reformed in the s. XII and that in the s. XV appears dependent on Santa María de Villamayor (Piloña, Asturies) and then San Pelayo d'Uviéu. Burned down in the summer of 1936 by the usual sheep and restored in 1950 by the architect Luis Menéndez Pidal. Single nave and rectangular head. Adds of belfry, sacristy and portico (ss. XVIII-XIX). Its processional cross (c. 1150), donated by Doña Sanccia Gundisalvi, was sold (1898) by the pastor of Palacio Palacio by mandate of the diocese - Bishop Ramón Martínez Vigil (1884-1904) - supposedly for the payment of the new Basilica of Covadonga, but that reeks of antiquarian operation, passing through different hands and countries (French and Yankee), donated in 1917 by the banker and collector John Pierpont Morgan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York).

Florentino Ballina (5 years ago)
It is a jewel of the Romanesque that I recommend visiting

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