Iglesia de Santa María la Mayor

The church of Santa María La Mayor de Abajas, is a Romanesque temple.

The site on which the church stands rises above the village and offers a good opportunity to look out over La Bureba. The church has two naves.

Its doorway is on the south side, and next to it is the quadrangular bell tower. The whole complex is built in sandstone. The semicircle of the apse has an oven vault, while the presbytery and the nave are closed with a slightly pointed barrel vault.

The north aisle, annexed later, around 1600, has three bays covered with starred ribbed vaulting, the central bay being identical to that of the sacristy.

On the outside, the apse rises on a small podium and shows a three-section articulation, produced by two slender columns that connect directly with the cornice. The openings have semicircular arches and not all of them are visible from the outside due to the northern nave being attached to one of the bays. Its tympanums are decorated with three blind semicircular arches, one at the top and the other two at the bottom.

A row of corbels ornament the eaves of the apse. The dominant constructive phase in the temple is clearly Romanesque, distinguishing a first stage in the middle of the 12th century which corresponds to the main phase and apse, and a second one around 1175, when the doorway was built. There have been other later alterations and additions, such as the north aisle, the bell tower, the chapel on the south wall and the atrium.

Inside, the apse is covered by an oven vault, while a slightly pointed barrel vault covers the presbytery and the main nave. The side nave was added in the 16th century and has three bays covered with a starred rib vault. The original stonework of the ashlars can still be seen, thanks to the recent whitewashing work carried out during the restoration works in 1993. These conservation works have served to bring this beautiful temple out of ruin.

The interior of this church is related to the Silos group, especially the doorway. It is formed by two archivolts, one historiated and the other plain, and a curious tympanum, decorated with poly-lobed blind arches, supported by corbels. There is a great richness of iconographic themes, some of them very characteristic of the Romanesque style: a man fighting against a dragon, a hooded man pulling out a thorn, a horseman with a dog on his horse, an eagle hunting. The fight between a man and a dragon are ways of transmitting religious ideas where the forces of good and evil are confronted, represented by the figures of the archivolts.

In the capitals of the interior we find lions, harpies and birds facing each other. There are also some simpler ones, adorned with floral decoration.