Tipe: Church
Centuries: XXI, XV, XVI
Architectural Style:Romanesque-Gothic-Renaissance
Village: Arties
Municipality: Naut Aran
The church of Santa Maria de Arties represents one of the standards of Aranese Romanesque architecture. The building has a basilica-type triple-nave ground plan, originally headed by three apses, of which only the sides remain. The central nave has a barrel vault where structural damage caused openings in the vault, still evident in the falling pilasters; the repair work conducted in 1999 solved these problems.
It retains two access facades, one in the south wall and the other facing north. The facade that opens north, without a tympanum, has six vaulted semicircular decreasing arches, with chequered decorative motifs and semispherical buttons. The door that leads south, to the cemetery, is based on three semicircular decreasing arches.
To the west there is a five-storey belfry with a pyramidal roof; Its style straddles Romanesque and Gothic, which means that it was possibly built in the 13th and 14th Centuries.
The mark left by the Gothic epoch in Santa Maria de Arties is magnificently embodied in the wall paintings of the roof of the presbytery and an altarpiece only recently restored by the Servicio de Conservación de Bienes Muebles de Sant Cugat. The 15th-Century altarpiece represents different bible scenes of the Virgin Mary, and is a masterpiece of Gothic Painting.
