The meaningful recuperation of the church of Sant Bartomeu de Navarcles, Cataluña

Abstract

In the outskirts of Narvacles (county of Bages, province of Barcelona), the remains of a small medieval church, desecrated in 1936 and abandoned to its fortune after the civil war, ran the risk of disappearing. In 1984, the municipal government asked the Diputació for help to stop the deterioration and offer some solution for the preservation of the remains. The initial scientific work discovered that structures from a Roman villa from the I century had been used in the construction of the chapel, an that the first building from the XIII century was expanded in the XVII, taking advantage of some of the elements of the primitive Romanesque portal. The solution projected was based on the consolidation of the ruin, and the construction of a small covered space —that recalI the volume of the first temple— delimited by the preserved medieval walls and other new ones. A platform separates this from the Roman remains. The effort was topped off with a small square in fron of the now disappeared north façade.