Church of Santa María a Real do Sar
cultural property in Santiago de Compostela, Spain
The Church of Santa María a Real do Sar (Galician: Igrexa de Santa María a Real do Sar) is a church located in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. It was declared Bien de Interés Cultural in 1895 and part of the UNESCO Heritage Site "Routes of Santiago de Compostela" since 1993.
It is one of the best examples of Romanesque architecture in the city, along with the cathedral. Construction began in the middle of the 12th century and was likely completed in the early 13th century. The workshop that completed the church and the cloister shows a clear influence of Master Mateo.
It is also notable for its leaning walls, due to its construction on marshy ground on the banks of the Sar river, which flows past Santiago. In the 18th century, to prevent the building from collapsing, a pair of buttresses were erected on either side, which went on to become one of the most striking features of the structure.
“Church of Santa María a Real do Sar” enters the record as cultural property in Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Church, Santa and María can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5117170. The first chronological checks are 1895 and 1993.
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This entry incorporates text from “Church of Santa María a Real do Sar” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.