Sancti Cirici de Colera/Sant Quirze de Colera (Alt Empordà, Girona). Estudio preliminar del conjunto monástico, siglos VIII al XVI

Sancti Cirici de Colera/Sant Quirze de Colera is a Benedictine monastic foundation on the southern face of the eastern Pyrenees. The various structures that have survived as well as the documentary sources provide a wide chronological range of the 8th to 16th centuries, when the monastic community moved to another location. In the 19th century the site became private property and in the 1990s the first efforts at restoration and archaeological excavation began. Our programme of new research into this very special complex began two years ago with a multi-disciplinary approach focusing on the entire complex and all its aspects: the analysis of written sources and preserved remains in order to understand and outline its principal phases of development, not only structural but also functional and liturgical, using all the most modern instruments and technologies of the various disciplines concerned. In order to achieve the maximum results, our analyses have followed a number of different techniques which include a topographic map, photogrammetry, plans and 3D modelling-reconstruction, as well as chrono-stratigraphical, architectural and liturgical analyses, that have allowed us to define the various historical phases in which this monastic site was founded, developed and finally abandoned. We present here some of the first results which, although preliminary, serve to illustrate the work being undertaken and the consequent reinterpretation of the abbatial church now possible.