Santa Eulàlia d'Encamp, home of Andorra's tallest Lombard bell tower

For many visitors, Santa Eulàlia is their first image of Encamp, even if it’s glimpsed from a coach window. Its bell tower rises above the slate roofs as soon as you enter the village, and I’d call it one of the most elegant Romanesque silhouettes in the country, all the more so because it survives surrounded by twentieth-century buildings.

Encamp’s parish church

Santa Eulàlia is the parish church of Encamp, the one people mean when they search for “Encamp church”. It stands in the lower part of the village, where the road turns into the old centre. It’s Romanesque in origin, but Andorra Tourism points out it was altered in the seventeenth and twentieth centuries, and the council sums it up as a church extended several times without entirely losing its first architecture.

The most visible changes are recent. In 1988 and 1989 the practice of Bohigas, Martorell and MacKay enlarged the nave, designed a square that opens onto it and added a new parish centre. Much earlier, in 1924, the Romanesque apse was knocked down, though its footprint is preserved inside the present building.

Why is the bell tower so well known?

It stands 23 m tall over three storeys, topped by a wrought-iron cross on a base of tufa stone. The council and Andorra Tourism agree that it’s the tallest bell tower in the Lombard Romanesque style in the country. They don’t agree on its century, one source saying the second half of the eleventh and the other the twelfth, so I’ll simply call it Romanesque.

Don’t get it muddled with another record. The tower of Sant Serni in Canillo is 27 m and its council calls it the tallest in the valleys, but it’s a Romanesque tower remodelled in the seventeenth century. Santa Eulàlia’s is the tallest that keeps the Lombard style.

The porch, the font and the comunidor

There are three things I’d seek out. The porch, from the fourteenth century, which the council calls the oldest in the Principality. The Romanesque font, carved with blind arches and fleurs-de-lis, along with three Baroque altarpieces from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and a modern stained-glass window by Encamp artist Agustí Rios. And outside, the comunidor, a tiny building where the parish council met and where rites were performed to ward off storms and downpours. Andorra Tourism says it’s one of the few still standing in the country.

One piece of Santa Eulàlia lives elsewhere. The Espai Columba museum in Santa Coloma displays oil lamps that came from this church.

The Sacred Art Museum next door

On the square that served as the church’s graveyard until the 1930s, an annexe houses the Sacred Art Museum, with objects found during building work on the church, such as a medieval wrought-iron candlestick and a fourteenth-century bronze censer. Andorra Tourism explains that a museum visit includes the church, so if the whole ensemble interests you, book them together. The museum charges €5 at full price and lets under-12s in free, according to museus.ad.

What else is nearby?

Santa Eulàlia sits on the edge of the old quarter, and Andorra Tourism urges visitors not to leave without walking its narrow cobbled streets, which it likens to a trip back to medieval Andorra. My route would be this. From the church, up through La Mosquera to Casa Cristo, the home of a labouring family turned museum, and back via El Tremat to see the Guillem mill, which the council says keeps its original machinery. Allow a couple of hours, no car needed.

If you’re here for Encamp’s village fiesta, around 15 and 16 August, the council’s programme includes a civic Mass and a young people’s Mass, and the centre takes on a completely different feel.

Visiting

You don’t pay to go in, and guided visits must be booked, according to Andorra Tourism, which also notes that the church is accessible. Bookings go through the village tourist office, and for opening times museus.ad, the government’s museums site, sends you to Casa Cristo on +376 833 551. Santa Eulàlia is also on the parish’s guided religious heritage walk, whose stops include Les Bons and the La Mosquera chapel. For the rest of the country’s Romanesque, see my guide to Romanesque churches in Andorra.