Iglesia San Nicolás: Valencia’s Hidden Sistine Chapel
Strolling down the tight alleyways surrounding Plaça de la Virgen in Valencia, Spain, walkers would never imagine they were within steps of a church which has been christened the Sistine Chapel of Valencia. Hiding behind storefronts on Carrier dels Cavallers, recent restorations to the ceiling of Iglesia San Nicolás (or, “The Church of St. Nicholas”) have made it one of the city’s top tourist attractions.
Iglesia San Nicolás has decayed and been restored multiple times in its nearly 800-year lifespan. Founded in the Roman Catholic church in c. 1242, it was refurbished in the Gothic style in the 15th century. While the Gothic exterior has been left untouched, the interior was completely redecorated in the baroque style between 1690 and 1704. During this time, the dazzling ceiling that gives the church’s aesthetic power was born — a series of frescos depicting the lives of Saint Nicholas and Saint Peter of Verona, the church’s other patron saint, that expertly utilize the shape of the Gothic arches combined with shadow to create a sense of depth that makes the characters depicted so vivid it seems they could jump from the ceiling.
The renovations of 1690 on this church are what make it one of the few Roman Catholic churches to fuse Gothic architecture with Baroque decoration. They were not, however, the last St. Nicholas would see. Fading frescos had made St. Nicholas lose the appeal it once had in the early 2000's, and the demand for store and apartment space in the area caused the church to both literally and figuratively fade into the background. Then, in 2016, the faculty of heritage restoration for the Technical University of Valencia partnered with the former director of the Sistine Chapel renovations, Gianluigi Colaluci, to bring the church back to its former glory. It is then that many began calling this church the Sistine Chapel, and the name stuck.
“It is not about comparing (fresco artist) Diondís Vidal’s work with that of Michaelangelo,” faculty of the Technical University of Valencia said in a statement released on the completion of the ceiling’s renovations. “It is about giving value to the temple and putting emphasis on the difficulties of painting 1,904 meters squared of irregular surface on the sky of this famous chapel.”
As the oldest church in the city, St. Nicholas is not only popular for its looks. The timeline of St. Nicholas directly reflects Valencia’s complex religious history. Originally built as a Roman-Hispanic temple sometime between 200–700, the building was converted into a mosque at the time of the Muslim Conquest of Spain in the 8th century. It was not until the 13th century, with the conquest of Juame I, that the building was claimed by the Roman Catholic Church and thus became one of the 12 religious sites to be reconquered in the region.
“I came to St. Nicholas because people in my class told me about the ceiling,” Said Keely Larson, a 19-year-old study-abroad student from the London School of Economics. “While the ceiling is beautiful, what actually struck me the most is the fact that this space has been used for three separate religions in its life. It just reminds you that there’s a bigger story — that city has a much more diverse religious history than we tourists tend to remember.”
Despite the rise in tourism that came with St. Nicholas’ 2016 restorations, the church continues to protect within its walls traditions, devotions, and folk rituals passed down through generations. Perhaps a product of its age or its inconspicuous location, St. Nicholas is home to some of the region’s most unique and mysterious religious practices. Some of these are the “Walk of St. Nicholas,” in which pilgrims walk from their homes to the altar of Iglesia San Nicolás in complete silence to ask for intercession from the saint, and the “Devotion of St. Jude,” in which practitioners ask for intercession from the patron of impossible causes.
“There’s no way you can leave this place without experiencing a sense of something higher than yourself,” Larson said. “Whether you’re pilgrimaging here every Monday or you’re only in Valencia for the day, you’ll be impacted by this site at a spiritual level.”
