Santa Maria Basilica

The Basilica of Santa María is the oldest religious building in Alicante. From the remains of the largest Islamic mosque in the city, this church was built in the 14th century. It was built with a single nave, without a transept and has side chapels between the buttresses. After a fire suffered during the fifteenth century, the Basilica of Santa Maria had to be rebuilt, hence its facade is baroque and is crowned by two asymmetrical towers built in the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries respectively. The cover with an image of the Virgin, made by the sculptor Juan Bautista Borja stands out. Inside the building, attention should also be drawn to several elements that stand out: the eighteenth-century Rococo altar and the chapels of Baptism, the Immaculate Conception and the Communion. In the Chapter Room there is a huge baptismal font from the 16th century and a Valencian Baroque organ from 1653.