Renovation of the presbytery of the Salamanca Cathedral

Image of the new presbytery of the Cathedral of Salamanca. Project management, liturgical furniture and chairs made by GRANDA.

In 1793, the altarpiece of the Main Chapel of the New Cathedral of Salamanca, made by Alberto Churriguera and completed only eleven years earlier, it was dismantled. It was planned to replace it with a marble tabernacle designed by Ventura Rodríguez. However, the project could not be carried out due to its high cost. And so it remained for more than two centuries.

GRANDA was entrusted with the task of adapting the presbytery of the Main Chapel. A space of these characteristics demanded a rigorous and respectful intervention that would meet the current needs of the liturgy and in which the dialogue between the different elements would form a harmonious whole in which each one of them would also stand out on its own.

The intervention was carried out in three differentiated coresOn the one hand, it has been revised altar and amboThe project was to offer a proposal that would take up the compositional lines of the building but transferred to a modern language. Located in the main building, elevated by a platform, they should enhance the view of the historic altar located there, not annul it.

Next, the ashlar was resolved as a functional element and as an organizing element. Finally, and as an altarpiece, the current crimson velvet canopy has been maintained on which appears the image of the Virgin of the Assumption by Esteban de Rueda of 1624. The following have been incorporated eight images of the Fathers of the Church (from the East and Western Europe), from the missing altarpiece.

GRANDA photo.