Santa María del Naranco

Listen first. Up here on the slope of Monte Naranco, the noise of the city falls away. You hear wind in the grass, perhaps a dog somewhere below, and your own footsteps on the gravel. In front of you stands a small, solid building of honey-grey stone. It looks almost too modest for its age. Yet this hall has stood on this hillside for more than eleven centuries.

This is Santa María del Naranco. Today most people call it a church, but it did not begin as one. It was built in the ninth century as a royal hall, a place of ceremony and leisure for a king. That king was Ramiro I of Asturias. His short reign began in 842 and ended in 850. In those few years, he left behind some of the most remarkable buildings in early medieval Europe.

To understand why this matters, picture the map of the Iberian Peninsula at that time. Most of the peninsula was under Muslim rule, known as al-Andalus. Here in the green, mountainous north, a small Christian kingdom held on. This was the Kingdom of Asturias. Its capital was Oviedo, the city spread out below you now. The kingdom was small and poor in resources, but it was proud. It built in stone to show that it intended to last.

The style you see here has a name: Asturian pre-Romanesque. Romanesque is the heavy, round-arched style that spread across Europe a few centuries later. This building came before it, and in some ways it points ahead to it. Historians often describe the Asturian builders as unusually inventive. They used ideas from Roman, Visigothic, and possibly Byzantine traditions. Then they combined those ideas into something that belongs only to this corner of Spain.

Look at the shape of the building. It is a long rectangle, set across the slope, with two floors. The lower floor sits partly against the hill. Above it is the main hall, reached by a double staircase on the outside. Tall buttresses run down the walls like ribs. They are not decoration. They carry the weight of the stone vault inside, and they are one of the reasons the hall still stands.

Here is the first surprise. The main hall has a stone barrel vault — a continuous curved ceiling, like the inside of a tunnel. That sounds ordinary today. But in the ninth century, a stone vault this wide was ambitious. Many buildings of the time used timber roofs, which burned easily. The builders strengthened the vault with transverse arches. These are bands of stone that cross the ceiling at regular intervals. Outside, each arch lines up with a buttress. Inside and outside work as one system.

Now go up the stairs, if the hall is open, and stand in the upper room. Notice the light. At each short end of the hall, there is an open gallery, a kind of viewing balcony. Each one opens through a triple arch. On a clear day, the light comes through from both ends at once. The king and his court could look out over the valley and the city. This was a building made for seeing, and for being seen.

Look closely at the columns. Many of them are carved with a twisting pattern, like a rope wound around the shaft. This rope motif appears again and again in Asturian buildings. It gives the stone a sense of movement. Some scholars connect it with older Mediterranean decoration. Whatever its origin, it is one of the features that makes this style easy to recognise once you know it.

The second surprise is on the walls. Along the upper hall, and on the outside too, you can find carved stone discs. These medallions hang from carved vertical bands, almost like jewellery hung on a wall. Inside the discs are animals and other figures. The capitals, the blocks at the top of the columns, also carry small carved scenes. Take your time with them. Many visitors walk past without noticing how much detail the carvers worked into such a small space.

There is also a piece of written evidence. An inscription on an altar stone names King Ramiro and his queen, Paterna. It records a dedication in the year 848. Inscriptions like this are rare and precious, because they connect a building to real people and a real date. Here, the stone itself tells us who commissioned this hall. That is why historians can speak about its origins with unusual confidence.

At some point in the Middle Ages, the royal hall became a church dedicated to Saint Mary. That change is the reason it survived. A palace can be abandoned when a dynasty moves on. A church tends to be cared for by its community. Over the centuries, many secular buildings of this period disappeared. This one lasted because people kept praying in it. In 1985, it became part of a UNESCO World Heritage listing that covers the monuments of Oviedo and the Kingdom of Asturias.

A short walk up the road brings you to its companion, San Miguel de Lillo. It was built in the same reign and in the same spirit. Only part of the original church survives, but its carved door frames and stone window screens are worth seeing. Together, the two buildings give you a rare picture of royal life on this hillside. One was for ceremony and pleasure. The other was for worship.

Before you leave, step back and look again at the whole building. Notice how the stone changes colour as clouds move across the sun. Notice the moss in the joints and the worn edges of the stairs. Thousands of feet have climbed those steps since the time of Ramiro. And notice the city below, with its rooftops and church towers. That city grew from the same small kingdom that built this hall.

As you walk back down the slope, listen once more to the wind in the grass. The king and his court are long gone. Their kingdom became part of a larger Spain many centuries ago. But the hall they built is still here, still standing on its strong buttresses, still open to the light at both ends. Take one last look over your shoulder. You are seeing it much as they did.