Church of Santa María de Narzana

The church of Narzana is located in the council of Sariego, in the east of Asturias. Built at the end of the 12th century, it has a single rectangular nave and a semicircular apse preceded by a straight section. The triumphal arch is pointed, with two archivolts decorated with zigzags and tetrapetals, supported by three columns on each side with capitals with plant and zooanthropomorphic motifs.

The nave is covered with a wooden frame and the apse with a quarter-sphere vault. The interior is illuminated by three small, internally spilling portholes topped by semi-circular arches, symmetrically distributed on the north and south walls.

The apse is decorated with a chequered cornice, corbels with different decorative motifs (balls, scrolls, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic) and tetrapetal metopes, it has a line of impost with floral motifs at mid-height, and in its centre there is a window with a semi-circular arch decorated with zigzags on two columns with vegetal capitals and its plinth is covered with a band of peaks.

The west doorway consists of three semi-circular archivolts with floral and zigzag decoration, with two columns on each side with figural and vegetal capitals. It is topped with a tiled roof with metopes and figural and vegetal corbels.

This church suffered a fire in 1936. It was restored by D. Luis Menéndez-Pidal y Álvarez around 1960.