Castro de Beiro Church, Beiro, Spain

The village of Castro de Beiro, in the rural perimeter of Ourense, receives its name from an old pre-Roman settlement (castrum) on a promontory that would allow its inhabitants to have an advantageous position against attacks. On this promontory is the parish church of St. Andrew in Beiro, from which magnificent views of the surroundings can be seen. The temple falls within the so-called “classic” type of Galician Romanesque, from the early 13th century.

The gate of the main façade consists of a slightly pointed semicircular arch with checkered decoration. A tree and five birds are represented on a capital, while its opposite contains vegetal decoration. On the tympanum, despite not being complete, a part of a cross is still distinguished. On the gate the eaves are adorned with balls and supported by several corbels with vegetal motifs.

Both the southern and northern façades are arranged in a similar way: a gate with a pointed arch and a smooth tympanum. The cornice is supported by corbels adorned with geometric shapes.

The apse is centered by the semicircular window in whose capitals vegetal motifs are represented. Cornices are supported with geometric corbels and in the metopes there are variations of 4-petal flowers.

References:

Ourense Tourism

Religious sites in Spain

Church of St Donatus

The Church of St Donatus name refers to Donatus of Zadar, who began construction on this church in the 9th century and ended it on the northeastern part of the Roman forum. It is the largest Pre-Romanesque building in Croatia.

The beginning of the building of the church was placed to the second half of the 8th century, and it is supposed to have been completed in the 9th century. The Zadar bishop and diplomat Donat (8th and 9th centuries) is credited with the building of the church. He led the representations of the Dalmatian cities to Constantinople and Charles the Great, which is why this church bears slight resemblance to Charlemagne's court chapels, especially the one in Aachen, and also to the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna. It belongs to the Pre-Romanesque architectural period.

The circular church, formerly domed, is 27 m high and is characterised by simplicity and technical primitivism.

Castro de Beiro Church

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Church of St Donatus