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Chapel of Santa Cruz

Cangas de Onís, Oriente, Asturias

1 Villages · 5 Monuments · 3 Nature

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Chapel of Santa Cruz

Monument · Cangas de Onís, Oriente, Asturias

The chapel of Santa Cruz stands in Cangas de Onís (Asturias), on a dolmen from the 3rd millennium BC known as the Dolmen de Santa Cruz. In the year 737, King Favila and his wife, Queen Froiluba, ordered a temple to be built on the mound to house the oak cross that Pelayo had carried at the Battle of Covadonga and which would later become the Cross of Victory, consecrated on 27 October of that same year. It is considered the first Christian temple built in Asturias after the Muslim invasion, and Favila and Froiluba were buried in it. Restored in 1633, the chapel was destroyed in 1936, during the Civil War, and the building visited today is a reconstruction by the architect Luis Menéndez-Pidal, completed in 1951.

Photo: Sitomon (Public domain)

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