The Cathedral of The Sanctuary or Lajaras is located in the river canyon Guaitara, in the village of Las Lajas municipality of Ipiales, seven kilometers from the town municipal center, in the department of Nariño in southern Colombia and 10 km of the border with Ecuador.
La Catedral de Las Lajas in Colombia, was built in 1916 at a site where, according to local legend, the Virgin Mary appeared. History tells us that an Aboriginal woman named Mary Mueses de Quiñones was carrying her deaf-mute daughter Rosa on her back near Las Lajas. When tired of the climb, Mary sat down on a rock when Rosa, her mute daughter, spoke (first time) about an apparition in a cave.

Photography by olliethebastard

Then a mysterious painting of the Virgin Mary carrying a baby was discovered in the cave wall. Supposedly, studies of the painting showed no evidence of paint or pigments in the rock – instead, when a sample was taken, found that the colors were impregnated in the rock at a depth of several feet. True or not, the legend spurred the construction of a Gothic building worthy of a fairy tale.

Architectural features:

The current building (the fourth since the eighteenth century), replaced a chapel dating from the nineteenth century and is a gray stone church, white late Gothic of the fourteenth century, consists of three ships built on a bridge of two arches crosses over the river and makes atrium or plaza of the basilica linking it to the other side of the canyon. The height of the temple from the base to the tower is 100 meters and the bridge is 50 meters high and 17 meters wide and 20 meters long.

Photography by olliethebastard

The main building measures by l5m background 27.50m wide. Inside, the three naves are covered with vaults. It has mosaics in fiberglass and day lighting gives your light that filters through the stained glass made by the Italian Walter Wolf. The fund or apse of the three ships is the natural stone wall of the canyon and in the central nave is an illuminating the image of the Virgen del Rosario, painted by an unknown author on a stone slab. The basement of the temple itself, besides the two arches of the bridge, is a Romanesque crypt with three naves covered with barrel vaults of ashlar stone structure and is dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Outside stand three towers ending in clumps and spurs decorated with foliage, windows, rose windows, buttresses, buttresses and pinnacles.

Bon voyage!

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