Sant Silvestre Chapel

You are right in front of the Sant Silvestre chapel located at Vallirana’s Vall d’Arús. Vall d’Arús is one of the most impressive natural areas of Vallirana, and it is included in the Protected Natural Area of the Ordal Mountains. The area was declared as a Special Protected Zone for the birds in 2005. It was later extended and was also included in the european protected national areas network. (Natura 2000)
The zone intersects with the PR-C 163 trail, certified by the Catalan Federation of Hiking Centres, and it is part of the Baix Llobregat network of trails.

Its vegetation is mainly comprised by pine trees, and it is watered by the Campderrós stream. In this area, we also need to highlight the Salt del Bou, the Guixera Valley and the Vall d’Arús. The valley is distinguished by its constructions of dry stone and the lime furnaces, as well as the location of the Can Bogunyà Masía (one of the oldest in town)

The first documented reference related with the temple was found in 904. The chapel was given to the Sant Cugat monastery by the bishop Teodoric of Barcelona, and became a monastic cell dependent of the church of Santa Creu (located in the valley of Cervello’s castle).

From the 13th century on, with the creation of the Sant Mateu church next to the Can Julia Masia, the chapel stopped being a temple of Vallirana even though the building functioned as an eremitic chapel.
As the date of the entrance hall indicates, at the very end of the 18th century (1793) the building was completely reformed and later recovered the functions of a church given that, during the war of Independence, the parish temple was burned down.

Later on, the chapel was transferred to the country house of Can Bogunyá and, in 1851, Josep Bogunya asked for a licence that would allow him to celebrate a major mass and that was when it was first documented as a public chapel. The Sant Silvestre romeria was celebrated until the civil war (1936-1939).

During the 20th century, the owners mortared the chapel in several occasions in order to avoid the increasing cases of vandalism.
In 2014, the Vallirana town hall and the ownership of the country house of Can Bogunyà signed an urbanistic agreement to temporarily transfer the rights of use of the land where the chapel is used, for a total of 75 years. The city council has been the responsible for the repairs of the area as well as for the restoration of the building, both unveiled in the 15th of May 2021.

The chapel of Sant Silvestre is considered a building of pre-Romanic origins, after the archaeologic excavations performed in 1991. It was redone during the second half of the 10th century, and it is one of the few architectonic vestiges that still remain in the region. However, after the latest archeologic intervention in 2021, some new evidence has emerged that proves the likeliness of it being a far more ancient construction, that could correspond to the Visigoth era (5th and 6th centuries).

Be that as it may, in the baroque era, the chapel suffered huge architectonic and decorative transformations, that have given the building its current characteristics and features.

Only the structure of the apse as well as the base of the walls would correspond to the very first phase of construction (5th and 6th centuries). The rest of the parts of the chapel, which would include the entrance and the small sacristy, were built in 1793, as the date of the entrance hall indicates.
The fact that we can identify the origins of the chapel of Sant Silvestre back to the 5th and 6th centuries highlights the great relevance of the monument in the whole historic picture of the antique architecture of the High Middle Ages in Catalonia.

After several architectonic interventions were performed in the chapel of Sant Silvestre in Vallirana, we have been able to identify three phases of the building’s evolution:

The 1st phase would correspond to the most ancient, documented moment of the building.
From this era, we have been able to identify the remains of a rectangular altar, of 80 x 60 cm, built with medium-sized stones bound with lime mortar which was situated in the centre of the apse. This altar had a pavement of white lime in the front and of clay in the back, which was built over a base of small blocks of stone (around 10 cm each) bound with clay and connected with the soil.

In the apse, several layers of coating have been located, a result of the decorative reforms that the building has suffered during the years. The ones that stand out are the baroque coatings of the 17th and 18th centuries, and the mortars corresponding to the late baroque of the 19th and 20th centuries.
On the wall of the apse, we can still find a little armoire that was used to keep an urn or a sculpture and served an ornamental function.

The precarity of the construction of the apse and the fact that it is not possible to see the start of the arch, makes us think that the roof was originally covered with word.
At the base of the hall, we have found the same type of stones found around the altar, which would mean that the hall and the presbytery were in the same floor level.
In the hall we have found some infants’ burials which could be from the 10th and 13th centuries. But the temporal precision of these calculations cannot be exact since there is not enough archeologic material related to the era of the burials.

In the 2nd phase: the centre altar is changed by a new one at the end of the apse. Some steps between the apse and the hall are built. The apse is connected to a pavement of slabs that would last until the end of the 18th century

In the 3rd phase: It corresponds to the great reform that took place in 1793. The annexed sacristy was built and so, it was necessary to tear down part of the apse and the altar was then located next to the hall. The pavement of slabs is substituted by a pavement of tiles. A new canopy is built with an arch of lunettes and a new entrance that has been maintained until now. We can see the date of the big reform next to the entrance door.

As we have already mentioned, the last archeologic interventions (performed between 2018 and 2020) have allowed us to trace the origins of the construction of the building until the 5th century instead of the 10th.
Various evidence have allowed us to reach the conclusion that the building has Visigoth origins:

1. Firstly, we have identified remains of foundation walls under the current façade, precisely in the zone of the apse, as well as in the zone of the sacristy and under one of the façade of the hall. We have also located the continuity of the walls towards the exterior of the building (which you can see in the exterior of the southern façade of the hall).The disposition of these remains of foundations only match partly with the totality of the current walls of the chapel. This fact indicates that the current chapel could have been built over a previous building whose volume, extent and functionality is unknown.
2. We have also located, in the exterior of the northern side of the apse, a funerary structure of rectangular stones, of 2 metres of length, 70 cm of width and 40 cm of depth, with plain stones at the base and which seems to correspond to a singular tomb.This funerary structure was fit in with precision thanks to the foundation of the original building, therefore this building was already built when the tomb was placed.
   At the interior of the tomb, there have been found bone remains of an adult male. The radiocarbon dating states that the remains correspond to the 6th and 7th century and therefore, the remains would also correspond to this era.
3. Finally, in the apse we have found a cross of great hardiness from which a letter alpha hangs (there should also be an omega letter, but it couldn’t be found). This iconography is paleo-Christian and in the same apse we have also found red paint which is the most ancient one that has been preserved, and it possibly corresponds to the Visigoth era.

The identification of the cross in the apse as a decorative element, the discovery of the funerary monument as well as the scientific dating of the bone remains trace the origins of the building of the chapel of Sant Silvestre back to the 6th century, which makes it an extraordinary example of the late ancient times in Catalonia, and it grants it a high historic, cultural and patrimonial value.

It should also be said that the archeologic interventions around the chapel of Sant Silvestre have not finished, since there are evidence around it, more specifically in the esplanade in front of it, that there could be archeologic remains, perhaps of a small town. This speculation has mainly emerged from the results of geophysical surveys with a georadar, but for now, it is only a hypothesis that will have to be proved to acquire more concrete data in relation to the historic and anthropological context of the chapel of Sant Silvestre of Vallirana.