Església de Santa Maria de l'Alba, Baroque church in Tàrrega, Spain.
Església de Santa Maria de l'Alba is a single-nave church with intercommunicating side chapels, a barrel vault with lunettes rising from an entablature, and a half-orange dome with ribs on a drum of eight windows alternating with paired pilasters. The facade follows a three-part composition but was finished in the 20th century with an 18th-century portal attributed to Pere Costa. The bell tower has a square base and a double octagonal body ending in a balustrade and pinnacles.
On 14 February 1672 the Romanesque bell tower of the old parish church collapsed and left the building badly damaged. The solution was a new church designed by the Carmelite friar Josep de la Concepció, known as "el Tracista"; his drawings of 1672 survive in the municipal archive. The main body was built between 1672 and 1696, and the chapels of the Dolors (1704) and the Roser (1724) were added later.
The interior frescoes come from one family of Tàrrega painters. Jaume Minguell i Miret painted the Montserrat and Dolors chapels, the baptistery and several altars between 1958 and 1965; his son Josep Minguell i Cardenyes added the transept walls, nave vaults and presbytery between 2004 and 2022, inaugurated in May 2022. A 1922 document records work by Josep Minguell i Gené, the family's first painter-decorator.
The main entrance is the 18th-century portal on the three-part facade, attributed to Pere Costa. A second door, the Portal de Cervera, has a niche holding a 17th-century stone image of the Mare de Déu de Cervera. The bell tower rises on a quadrangular base as a double octagonal body ending in a balustrade and pinnacles.
The 1672 collapse of the old Romanesque parish church's bell tower, on 14 February, forced the decision to build a new church on the same site. The original drawings by Fra Josep de la Concepció, dated 1672, are kept in the municipal archive and show the works followed his guidelines closely.
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