Zamora's Medieval Treasures: San Pedro de la Nave, Part II: The Ricobayo Threat

The previously flooded town of San Pedro de la Nave.
Photos in this post by Jessica Knauss 2017. 

Imagine it's 1928 and you're a newly rediscovered pre-Romanesque treasure that happens to be on the banks of the Esla River. Yes, you are San Pedro de la Nave. In spite of a cave-in and some random additions, you still preserve the extraordinary remains of Visigothic sculpture and architecture. All of a sudden, after 1300 years of existence, you find yourself in the path of a reservoir project, about to be swallowed up by the rising waters of progress.

What do you do?

The bricks look haphazard, but they aren't. Just some of the sly smarts
of Visigothic architecture. Note the alabaster window, a recent addition. 

The Church of San Pedro de la Nave started out as the most important building in its area, the center of six small towns. Although it's not mentioned specifically in the historical record until 907, it's thought that it was the monastic center where Saint Valerio lived and did his saintly work in the seventh century because he describes it as the biggest and most luxurious of his time. When the area came under Muslim control, San Pedro slipped into obscurity. It seems there was never much money to do extensive construction work, a circumstance that saved San Pedro virtually intact for us today. In 1906, Don Manuel Gómez Moreno "discovered" the church for the modern era and it was declared a national monument in 1912.

Official tour guide Eva demonstrates how the bricks are held together.
They're basically stapled with wooden clamps.Those holes should be in the back.  

In the 1920s, engineers became interested in the area for its hydraulic power potential. They wanted to build a dam near the town of Ricobayo, which would create a reservoir in part of the Esla River, drowning all the small towns on its banks, and destroying San Pedro de la Nave. It had just come back into the spotlight and had recently gained a few defenders. Progress couldn't be stopped, however. Historical arguments could not prevent the building of the dam.

The original site of San Pedro de la Nave. Note the foundation stones. 

Luckily, there were enlightened people on both sides of the issue, and someone came up with the idea of moving the church, brick by brick, to a safer location. The builders of the dam paid for the move, which took two years and a lot of research, love, and guesswork. Gómez Moreno directed the project with architect Alejandro Ferrant Vázquez and the resulting monument is a lasting testament to their scholarship.

This Gothic bell gable was removed from the church
and is now used as part of the fencing around it. 

While they dismantled the church, the workers and scholars learned a lot about Visigothic building techniques. They made note of everything, and some Roman funerary stelae and fragments of an altar were found. Most of the treasures can be viewed in the Museum of Zamora, but the altar blocks were creatively rearranged in the new place to provide an altar for occasional services.

The new altar uses blocks discovered in the dismantling process. 

The stones look like you could knock
them over with a feather, but trust me,
they aren't budging! 

San Pedro de la Nave is now found two kilometers from where it originally stood in exactly the same north-south orientation as before. The original area was indeed flooded, but in recent years the water level has receded to the point that we can visit the church's original site without getting wet. Organic materials have washed away, but the sturdy stone structures of the entire town remain exactly where they were originally built.