Santa María de los Arcos de Tricio (La Rioja), Santa Coloma (La Rioja) y La Asunción de San Vicente del Valle (Burgos). Tres miembros de una familia arquitectónica

Abstract

There is a series of high medieval buildings scattered around the present-day provinces of Álava, Burgos and La Rioja which form an architectonic family whose main common features are the covering of the apsidal spaces with travertine stone domes propped up on squinches and the recurrent reuse of masonry from Roman stone. The chronological ascription of the different components of this family of buildings is surprisingly varied. Some are held as genuine Roman works while others are dated in the Visigoth period or even later. We believe that this chronological disparateness is historically incomprehensible. The homogeneity of techniques and results must correspond to an equally homogenous chronological/material period which is unlikely to last for so many centuries. We defend high medieval dates (9th-10th century) for all the members of this architectonic group, both for technical and historic reasons.