VISIT

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The Royal Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Snows was founded with the transfer of the image of the Virgin from the cave of the ravine where it was placed in the evangelizing stage of the island by the first conquerors. The image is made of polychrome terracotta and was sculpted by Lorenzo Mercadante de Brittany, a northern European artist established in Seville between 1454 and 1467.

The sanctuary, which has become the main center of Marian worship on La Palma, follows the construction model of the palm hermitages: the main chapel is higher than the nave based on the works carried out in 1876, which changed the coffered ceiling to a half-barrel vault, decorated in 1894 with a program on the Assumption of the Virgin executed by the Madrid-born Ubaldo Bordanova Moreno; the main chapel and the nave are separated by a main arch, made in 1740; the nave has an octagonal pulpit and a baptistery since 1672, after the parochial foundation; on the side of the Epistle, towards the square, it has a classicist portico and the main door, facing south, has an exterior balcony connected to the choir, from which the bells of the belfry are tolled; in the east-south corners, there is a recently restored tea wood sundial, dated between 1733 and 1740.