The Royal Basilica of Our Lady of Atocha or Real Basílica de Nuestra Señora de Atocha is a large church in central
Madrid
Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...
on Avenida de la Ciudad de Barcelona, 1.
[https://www.esmadrid.com/informacion-turistica/basilica-de-nuestra-senora-de-atocha]
History
It is one of the six
basilica
In Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica is a large public building with multiple functions, typically built alongside the town's forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek East. The building gave its name ...
churches in Madrid, alongside the
''Our Father Jesús de Medinaceli'',
''San Francisco el Grande'', ''
St. Michael's Basilica, Madrid'', ''Basílica Hispanoamericana de Nuestra Señora de la Merced'', and ''
Church of La Milagrosa
Church may refer to:
Religion
* Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities
* Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination
* Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship
* C ...
''.
The buildings on the site have a long history. The original name refers to a lost icon from a chapel which was found among some high grasses -referred to as tocha- during the time of the
Reconquista
The ' (Spanish, Portuguese and Galician for "reconquest") is a historiographical construction describing the 781-year period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula between the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in 711 and the fall of the Nasrid ...
. The old church was in disrepair and rebuilt in the 1890s in a
Neo-Byzantine
Neo-Byzantine architecture (also referred to as Byzantine Revival) was a revival movement, most frequently seen in religious, institutional and public buildings. It incorporates elements of the Byzantine style associated with Eastern and Orth ...
style designed by
Fernando Arbós y Tremanti
Fernando Arbós y Tremanti (22 October 1844, Rome - 18 December 1916, Madrid) was a Spanish architect; best known for the Iglesia de San Manuel y San Benito.
Life and work
He was born in Rome to the painter, , and his wife Gertrudis. From 1862 ...
.
The church was destroyed during the
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, lin ...
and reconstruction completed in 1951.
Adjacent to the church is the
Pantheon of Illustrious Men
The Pantheon of Illustrious Men ( es, Panteón de Hombres Ilustres) is a royal site in Madrid, under the administration of the Patrimonio Nacional. It was designed by Spanish architect Fernando Arbós y Tremanti, and is located in Basilica of N ...
or ''Panteón de Hombres Ilustres'' of Madrid. It holds the remains of only a former president of the council of ministers,
José Canalejas, however it also contains a number of interesting monuments from and just after the turn of the 19th century.
See also
*
Catholic Church in Spain
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, image = Sevilla Cathedral - Southeast.jpg
, imagewidth = 300px
, alt =
, caption = Cathedral of Saint Mary of the See in Seville
, abbreviation =
, type ...
*
List of oldest church buildings
This article lists some but by no means all of the oldest known church buildings in the world. In most instances, buildings listed here were reconstructed numerous times and only fragments of the original buildings have survived. These surviving ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Atocha, Basilica of Nuestra Senora de
Roman Catholic churches in Madrid
Basilica churches in Spain
20th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in Spain
Buildings and structures in Pacífico neighborhood, Madrid