The town of Grecia is not too far from us so we drove in that direction for an afternoon of exploring. This church is on the central square of the town. It is interesting and different than most old churches in that it is constructed from steel plates imported from Belgium in 1897. The town is called the used car capitol of Costa Rica and rightly so as the main road into town is lined with used car dealerships. But I enjoyed the church more than the car dealerships.
This is one of the decorative side doors. The books don't say why the church was constructed from steel plates, but I wonder if it is that some of the other old churches were destroyed by earthquakes and maybe they thought that the steel would withstand earthquakes better than stone.
Gothic side windows and a pretty yellow flowering tree. The guidebooks call it a barn red church so I suppose it has always been painted this color with the trim in white. I quite like the color scheme.
This is a tiny side door at the back of the church. If it has a specific function, I don't know. But you can see where the plates of steel are rivetted together.
Inside, above the main door is the pipe organ backed by stained glass windows.
The arched ceiling is made of wood, painted white. You can see the outline of the individual boards. There are a lot of pretty glass chandeliers.
Again, the interior painted white, the stained glass windows, and the glass chandeliers, pretty dark wood pews and side altars.
This is that tiny door from the inside. Again you can see the joins of the steel plates where they are rivetted together.
Rivets on the inside of one of the main doors.
Pretty tiled floor.
2 comments:
What a pretty and interesting building. All the rivits kind of make it feel like a giant ship or something.
I had that thought about it resembling a ship too. I have heard that the pioneers in Utah used their ship building skills to do some of the early church buildings there.
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