Church of Santa Maria

The Church of Santa Maria is a large fourteenth century Gothic-style parish church, finished with an angular apse and flanked by altars along each side.

Over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the walls of the presbytery, with its four side chapels, were built and the chancel vaults of the nave were subsequently renovated during the seventeenth century. The chapel to the side of the entrance, the two closest to the chancel and the Capella dels Dolors, which houses the Piety sculpture by the sculptor Amadeu, were built at the beginning of the eighteenth century. As a result of the damage caused by a series of earthquakes in 1428, a number of renovations have subsequently been carried out.

The church still houses a magnificent silver reliquary bust containing the remains of Camprodon’s patron saint and the protagonist of local legend, Saint Palladius. Visitors can enjoy a permanent exhibition on display in the front chapel containing gold and silver religious pieces dating from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries collected from the parish churches in the Camprodon Valley.

From as far back as the thirteenth century, Santa Maria was a popular religious centre among the Camprodon bourgeoisie, which led to the construction of a new and sumptuous church on the site of the original primitive early medieval building, of which nothing now survives.

Significantly, the first historical records of a church dedicated to St Mary refer to Camprodon and, although nothing remains of that original church, we do know that it previously stood on the same site as the current one.