Sant Miquel de Campanet
Illes Balears, ES
This temple, which for eight centuries has not lost its cult, was converted into a Christian church, after the conquest of Mallorca by King James I (1229), of the Crown of Aragon, and is oriented to the east by where the sun rises, as the Arabs used to do when building a mosque. It is very likely that the Arabs found in this sacred place a Paleo-Christian temple from the earlier Byzantine period. The church was in the 13th century the first parish of Campanet (a large municipality that also consisted of Sa Pobla i B??ger and the entire scattered rural population). In front of the church is the old cemetery that was used, until the new parish was inaugurated in the town of Campanet, in the 15th century. Later, when it was forbidden to bury in urban centers in the 17th century, this medieval cemetery was used again for a few more centuries, until the new municipal cemetery of Campanet was built in 1927. It has been obsolete for more than a century, but this feeling of a time that has stopped is endowed with great beauty and it is the obligation of our society to preserve this medieval heritage with dignity.