Almudena Cathedral: the Neo-Romanesque Crypt

Essential, for anyone who comes to Madrid and visits the Almudena Cathedral, it is also to know that authentic demonstration of Art, architectural skill and above all, beauty, which is its grandiose crypt.

Unlike the Gothic and Neoclassical layouts that essentially characterize the architectural patterns developed in the brand-new cathedral, the crypt, on the contrary, does contain clearly neo-Romanesque patterns, the effects of which are also superbly fantastic.

Its situation, to add even more idiosyncratic mystery, is another interesting fact to take into account, since we have to place it at that exact point on the Cuesta de San Vicente, where tradition places the place where it was miraculously found, hidden in a hollow of the wall and according to legend, illuminated by one of those mysterious 'eternal lanterns', which have given so much to think about modern historians, the image of the Black Virgin, so venerated by the people of Madrid: the Almudena.

Like the plan of the cathedral itself, the crypt also forms a traditional cross, housing such relevant works, such as a remarkable image of the Christ of the Roads, highly venerated also by the people of Madrid and by those pilgrims who visit the capital. following one of the many pilgrimage paths that run from south to north across the Iberian Peninsula to the tomb of the Apostle Santiago, in Compostela, as well as the image, Romanesque and found in what was the original church of Santa María, on which Later he built the cathedral of the Virgen de la Flor de Lis, an image that, together with that of Almudena and Atocha, is part of the oldest heritage of this city, known as Madritum in Roman times and later as Magerit, during the Arab rule.

The superb construction is witnessed by the four hundred columns that form an intricate forest of chiaroscuro and which incidentally also set the foundations on which the apse or head of the cathedral rises.

A forest of columns, each of them enabled by immeasurable capitals, which display a multitude of classical motifs, from the typical acanthus formations, so common to the original models of Romanesque temples, such as characters, castles and situations, which although enabled to the taste of later times, they also constitute a remarkable artistic display that is worth getting to know and certainly admire.

It also has a central ambulatory decorated with stained glass windows, which show figures, both apostolic and relevant characters from the Bible and the Old Testament, in addition to housing what could well be described as the cemetery of the Greats of Spain, until the the point that both its chapels and columbariums, as well as the corridors and corridors themselves, house numerous tombs, belonging to the nobility and the wealthiest classes of society, both Madrid and Spanish as a whole.

But what draws the most attention, in that forest of penetrating silences and chiaroscuro, are the domes themselves, in whose arabic design and taking advantage precisely of the 'magic' of these light effects, one can distinguish curious geometric shapes, which determine , put to imagine, formidable crescents, whose beauty seems, without a doubt, of decisively supernatural origin.

Although the crypt was inaugurated in 1911, it was also involved in the same vicissitudes that lengthened the construction of the Almudena Cathedral itself, including, of course, the unfortunate period corresponding to the Civil War and the so-called postwar period, not being relatively finished the works until 1969.