The Mare de Déu de Tura Church is highly significant to the city of Olot. Its origins can be traced back to the 9th century, and over its lifetime the building has been reconstructed and reformed several times, while also managing to withstand a great deal of adversity.
The building was completely destroyed by the earthquakes of 1427 and 1428. It was subsequently rebuilt. The sanctuary went up in flames at the beginning of the Spanish civil war. It narrowly missed being pulled down, but was once again subsequently rebuilt. Nowadays, you can appreciate its characteristic Baroque features, as it was renovated in this style during the 16th century. On several occasions during the 18th and 19th centuries, substantial work was carried out on the inside of the church.
The building, which was entirely decorated by Joan Carles Panyó, one of the most renowned Catalan Neoclassical artists of the times, houses a collection of embroidered vestments spanning from the 17th to the 20th centuries. The inside of the church boasts a wide range of extremely precious artworks. One of the most significant of these is the 18th-century sculpture Ecce Homo - one of the greatest masterpieces by Ramon Amadeu, which was salvaged from the fire that ravaged the building during the Civil War. You can also contemplate the 18th-century carving of Saint Joachim, a painting of the Virgin Mary of Tura from the same century, the Tura oratory, the altarpiece of the high altar, the dome of the central nave, the 17th-century central dome, the detail of the painted ceiling above the high altar, the Virgin Mary’s crown and the paintings of the four evangelists that decorate the sides of the crossing, which exude a certain influence of Michelangelo and his paintings in the Sistine Chapel.
The image of the Virgin Mary of Tura, which is still venerated at the sanctuary to this day, is a beautiful Romanesque-style wood carving, showing influences from the Ripollès area and carved from walnut and poplar wood in the 18th century by the Baroque artist Ramon Amadeu. The bottom of the throne is decorated with the four red and yellow painted stripes that represented the former Countship of Barcelona. When the carving was restored in the late 1980s, experts were able to establish that although it had been worshipped as a Black Madonna for centuries, it was actually not black. The lamps and candles that had burnt beside the sculpture throughout the ages had caused the original colour to darken.
The Mare de Déu Church (or Santa Maria del Tura as it is also known), is not only significant for its artistic content, but also for its value as a historical asset. Up until the 16th century, the church formed the meeting place of the municipal government, and just beside it the city of Olot was founded. It is also one of the few fully decorated buildings in the diocese of Girona.
Visit the Trincheria House Museum, one of the most important ancestral homes in Olot, located at no. 29, Carrer de Sant Esteve. The house-museum is quintessential of how a well-off family lived in the first half of the 18th-century.
The Cloister of the former Carmen Convent in Olot, located at no. 3, Carrer Padre Antoni Soler, is a formation of impressive Renaissance galleries that is of the most unique and symmetrical in the whole of Catalonia.
The Malagrida neighbourhood (L’Eixample Malagrida in Catalan) is the most emblematic urban treasure in Olot. Built between 1916 and 1925, it is an example of the Noucentista “garden city” movement that took hold in the early 20th century.