St. Martin’s Church

It has an 11th century Romanesque apse, one of the oldest in the area. It preserves works of great value such as a Gothic crucifix and has been registered as an Asset of Cultural Interest in the category of Monument since 25th November 1980.

The church has undergone several stages of construction from the primitive building of the late 11th or early 12th century, which consisted of a nave, a presbytery and an apse. Today it is only possible to see the apse from the outside, which still has the two capitals of the columns (possibly free-standing) that divided it into three sections, and the corbels that show motifs such as the sun and the moon, male and female faces and various animals (eagles, snakes, etc.).

From the following construction stage, which consisted of the construction of a portico at the foot of the church and which took place in the middle of the 12th century, only one of the arches that serves as a shutter to the present-day narthex and another one that has been blinded are preserved. Still in the Romanesque period, in order to give the church the status of an abbey, two naves were built attached to the side walls of the original one, to form, together with the two churches of Logroño and the cathedral of Santo Domingo, one of the few examples of a church with three naves in Romanesque La Rioja. The only ornamentation in these two naves were the arrow slits for lighting and cavetto corbels to support the roof. In the nave of the epistle there is a semi-circular door with a blinded doorway.