Sant Bartomeu i Santa Tecla de Sitges, Baroque church on Mediterranean coast in Sitges, Spain.
Sant Bartomeu i Santa Tecla is a baroque church on the Mediterranean coast of Sitges, defined by three interior naves with barrel vaults and ribbed supports. Two bell towers rise distinctly above the structure, visible from the seafront.
A Romanesque church and then a Gothic one, begun in 1322 under Bernat de Fonollar, stood on this site before the present building; little of them is known because documentation before the 17th century was lost. Construction of the baroque church started in 1665 and it was blessed on 18 July 1672. In the 19th century the Chapel of the Santíssim was built (1854–1856) and the octagonal bell tower was remodelled in 1868, the year the town's bells and clock were installed after the old Torre de les Hores in Carrer Major was demolished.
The church is dedicated to Saint Bartholomew and Saint Tecla, two figures central to the local community's religious identity. Their names and images appear throughout the building and shape how people here connect with this place.
The main entrance is on the upper side facing the town, with three round-arched doorways; the seafront side is reached by steps up the hill. Inside, the baroque organ stands against the gallery on the right of the nave, halfway along. The chapel of the Holy Sacrament, on the right, holds Corinthian capitals and a 20th-century Last Supper mural by Darius Vilàs.
Under the choir are two Gothic tombs, dated 1317 and 1322, holding Bernat de Fonollar, Galceran de Ribes and Galceran de Pacs. Fonollar had promoted the earlier Gothic church on this site. The 1499 Renaissance panel of the patron saints by the Neapolitan painter Nicolau de Credença, kept at the Vinyet sanctuary, returned here in 1939 and was placed behind the altar.
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