Cathedral of María Inmaculada (Vitoria)

The Parish Church of Mary Immaculate, Mother of the Church, in Vitoria (Basque Country), is a Catholic church located in the central Lovaina neighbourhood of the capital of Alava.

Built in the neo-Gothic style in the first half of the 20th century, it is popularly known as the New Cathedral, a formula used to distinguish it from the older Cathedral of Santa María, a Gothic temple from the 13th and 14th centuries built in the upper part of the city, in turn known as the Old Cathedral.

Regular worship is held both in the church and in the crypt, under the ambulatory, which serves as the parish church of the same name. The church, one of the largest in Spain, is also one of the last great cathedrals erected in the country, although it is an incomplete construction, as lack of funding left a series of architectural elements unfinished that would have resulted in a church with a very vertical layout, instead of the horizontality resulting from the non-compliance with the original project, and with a much more ornate decoration.

The building, of imposing proportions, consists of five longitudinal naves, the main nave and four side naves, a transept with three naves, an ambulatory with two naves and seven apse chapels, a portico, a crypt and a sacristy. With 118 metres from apse to portico, 62 metres wide between the two transept walls and 35 metres high at the transept, it is the second largest church in Spain after Seville Cathedral. Its Latin cross plan is reminiscent of Chartres Cathedral and covers a surface area of 5,750 square metres, with a capacity for 15,000 people.

The main artistic interest of the temple lies in its wealth of sculpture, which shows marked stylistic variations due to the different stages of construction. In the crypt and on the exterior walls of the apse, numerous reliefs can be seen on archivolts, panels, friezes, historiated capitals and sculptural motifs that combine religious iconography with other profane, fantastic and vegetal themes, the latter surprisingly imaginative and often boldly satirical. The whole ensemble is brimming with symbolism and moral warning. The stained glass windows also respond to different tastes and stylistic conceptions.

Since 1999, the cathedral ambulatory has been used as a space for the Álava Diocesan Museum of Sacred Art, which houses a rich sample of the province's religious artistic heritage, divided into sections of stone carving, wood carving, panel painting, painting on canvas, gold and silver work and liturgical furniture.

Article obtained from Wikipedia article Wikipedia in his version of 03/09/2020, by various authors under the license Licencia de Documentación Libre GNU.

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