San Gil Abad is a church in

Zaragoza Zaragoza, also known in English as Saragossa,''Encyclopædia Britannica'"Zaragoza (conventional Saragossa)" is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. It lies by the Ebro river and its tributari ...

, Spain.

History

After 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 ...

of the city from Islamic hands, a church was built in Romanesque style on an ancient Roman road; in the mid 14th-century, this edifice was destroyed to build a new church in

Mudéjar Mudéjar ( , also , , ca, mudèjar , ; from ar, مدجن, mudajjan, subjugated; tamed; domesticated) refers to the group of Muslims who remained in Iberia in the late medieval period despite the Christian reconquest. It is also a term for ...

style, later renewed in Baroque style during the 18th century.

Architecture

The church has a plan with a single nave with two polygonal apses, with chapels in the

buttress A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall. Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient buildings, as a means of providing support to act against the lateral ( ...

es. The tower, with a square plan, is in brickwork like the rest of the church. The main entrance was built in 1640. The interior style dates to the Baroque renovation from 1719 and 1725, when also the orientation of the temple was changed. The altarpiece (1628) is dedicated to St. Gil Abad. The sacristy was built between 1776 and 1779, and has a vault with a fresco by

Ramón Bayeu Ramón Bayeu y Subías (2 December 1744, Zaragoza – 1 March 1793, Aranjuez) was a Spanish Neoclassicist painter; known primarily for his work in tapestry design. Biography His father made surgical instruments and barbers' tools. He was the br ...

and walls with seven paintings on canvas, by Manuel Bayeu.

External links

Page at Zaragoza Town Hall website
{{coord missing, Spain Gil Abad Mudéjar architecture in Aragon Romanesque architecture in Aragon 14th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in Spain