February 23, 2011

Course 

THE CATHEDRAL OF PAMPLONA. A VIEW FROM THE 21ST CENTURY

Under the floor of Pamplona Cathedral

Ms. Mª Ángeles Mezquiriz (Honorary Director of the Museum of Navarre) and
Ms. Mercedes Unzu (Archaeologist)

The cathedral, more than any other building in the city, is a reflection of our past and has preserved within its walls testimonies of the different events that have made up the history of the urban center of Pamplona.
The archaeological interventions carried out in the area of the cathedral and inside the temple allow us to establish a chronostratigraphic sequence from the Bronze Age to modern times.

The Plan Director of Restoration of the Cathedral provided the unique opportunity to carry out a major intervention in its interior, despite the fact that the archaeological potential was partially destroyed due to intrusions in the subsoil from different periods (foundations of the Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals, crypt of the tomb of Charles III and burials), important results were achieved:

Four periods corresponding to Roman times were identified from the founding period (1st century B.C.) to the low empire (4th-5th century A.D.), a time of sacralization of the space and its conversion into a Christian religious center.

There are also vestiges that belong to the Paleo-Christian, Visigothic and pre-Romanesque periods. The complete floor plan of the Romanesque cathedral and its crypt is documented with maximum dimensions of 70m. long and 44.50 m. wide in the transept.

Of the Gothic cathedral, the foundations and the burials are being studied.

At the present time and within the Rehabilitation Plan of the Cathedral Complex, a series of interventions are being carried out to obtain data for the plan director. We have started with the excavation of the cloister burials, since the salts and phosphates in the bone remains are another cause of the deterioration of the stone, and this intervention and the documentary study that is being carried out in parallel will allow a new prosopographical study. The emptying of the tombs and their new relocation allows the cloister to be used again as a columbarium, returning it to the use for which it was designed.
 

Central nave of the cathedral: excavations 

Crypt of the Romanesque Cathedral