📋 Tender Overview
This Tuesday night the restoration lighting and adaptation of the interior and exterior spaces of the Romanesque church of Sant Joan de Caselles in Canillo were announced. The works were carried out between November 2022 and June 2023 with the aim of reassessing the most unique and characteristic elements of the monument and the cultural assets it houses at a total cost of 205450 euros.The Minister of Culture Youth and Sports Mnica Bonell stressed that with this intervention in Sant Joan de Caselles the Government reaffirms its commitment to revalue Romanesque in our country. The intervention has sought at all times respect for the historical artistic cultural and religious values of the monument and the conservation of the spirit of the place. The event was also attended by the Episcopal Co-Prince Joan-Enric Vives the consuls of Canillo and other authorities of the parish and the country.As for the works on the one hand the monumental lighting of the Temple has been carried out both exterior and interior to highlight the most characteristic and unique elements that represent it and improve the immediate surroundings following the criteria of sustainability and energy saving. In addition the adaptation work has made it possible to clean the roof trusses while documenting them graphically and extracting remains for analysis and obtaining more information about the construction of the Romanesque church.On the other hand the pictorial decoration of the triumphal arch which was partially hidden under several layers of lime as well as the wooden furniture of the eighteenth century has been recovered and restored and conservation work has been carried out on the Romanesque mural complex the altarpiece and the baroque altar front. Finally the intervention was completed with the archaeological monitoring that led to the discovery of ten human burials from medieval times and the discovery of a wrought iron key and a bronze ring in one of the exhumed remains.The architect Miquel Merc was in charge of directing the adaptation and lighting works and was carried out by the companies Construcciones Purroy and PIME with the collaboration and economic participation of FEDA and the Com de Canillo. While the recovery and restoration of the decorative paintings has been carried out by the technical team of the Department of Cultural Heritage. The restoration company De Vell a Bell has carried out the cleaning of the wooden trusses and the floor of the nave and the stucco of the walls has been carried out by Pintura art i decor lo Antic. The intervention was also carried out with the advice of the expert in conservation and restoration Eudald Guillamet.It should be remembered that the church is part of the multinational candidacy Andorra-France-Spain to the UNESCO World Heritage Representative List The material testimonies of the construction of the state of the Pyrenees the co-principality of Andorra. And in addition both the church of Sant Joan de Caselles and the other monuments of the candidacy are already part of the Indicative List of UNESCO one more step to formalize the demand to the international body.Sant Joan de Caselles is one of the best known and most relevant examples of Andorran Romanesque architecture and was declared an asset of cultural interest in 2003. The nave and bell tower were built between the end of the eleventh century and the beginning of the twelfth century the porches covering the main entrance and the west faade are later probably from the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries.
