Sant Andreu

BRIEF HISTORY

The first historical record of a structure existing on the Saint Andreu’s site is from 966. During that century, the church was destroyed in 985 by Al-Mared and rebuilt in 990 as a temple belonging to the parish of Sant Andreu.

The next mention of its existence is in the XII century. In 1100, the church was destroyed by an Almoravid attack. The community re-built a new Romanesque structure again in 1132.

Due to the industrialization of the XIX century, the town encouraged a significant growth. In 1850 the architect Perre Falques was commissioned to construct a new and larger structure. By 1881 the main structure (naves, alter and dome) were completed and the church opened to the public.

On August 9^th 1882, the dome collapsed, killing 7 people and injuring 11 more. To ease public fears and ensure the safety of the new dome, Joan Torras I Guardiola designed a connecting steel frame between the exterior and interior domes. The new dome system was completed in 1885. Between 1889 and 1904 the restoration of the main facade and bell tower was finished.

Only 5 years after its completion, the structure was burned as many other churches in Barcelona during the Tragic Week in 1909. The church was quickly repaired before it was burned and looted again during the Spanish Civil War in 1936. This time, the damages mainly affected the interior and they were not repaired until 3 years later.

The final major event in the XX century which altered the church was the construction of the metro during the years 1965 and 1967. During the construction process some water entered in the tunnels causing settlement of the main facade. The damages induced by these differential settlements were not fixed until 1982 due to a lack of money. This intervention included drilling micro-piles beneath the entrance and first bays of the church and adding two longitudinal (reinforced concrete) beams to tie the front facade to the rest of the structure.

In 2004, a piece of the dome fell, damaging the ceramic tiled roof below. Immediately after the accident, the roof was repaired and a net was added to the dome to prevent future drops. Since that time, a number of investigations have questioned the structural stability of the dome, but again a lack of money hasprevented the implementation of any restoration plans.

ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES AND GEOMETRY

The church was designed in a Neoclassical style in the late XIX century. Regular stone masonry covers the main facade and the lower half of the unique single bell-tower on the right of the structure. The upper tower and tambour of the dome are finished with clay bricks, while the remainder of the exterior was constructed with rubble masonry, mixing bricks with little stones in a non-homogeneous matrix.

The church consists of a main nave and two lateral naves, in a succession of arches forming a barrel vault. The thrust of the main nave is counterbalanced by a system of buttresses connected by orthogonal walls. These longitudinal walls on each side of the central nave have midpoint arch opening between each arched rib of the barrel vault that lead to the smaller lateral naves. The external roofing of these naves is made of traditional Arabic tiles over timber or concrete beams.

Following the typical cross-plan layout, a large and spacious transept crosses the nave before the apse with a large dome above the intersection. The most notable architectural element of the church is the external ribbed dome, rising from 40 to 60m.