THE LAMENTATION OVER THE DEAD CHRIST ALTARPIECE

SURROUNDINGS 

The parish church of St. Saturnine (San Saturnino) was the principal church in the Borough of St. Cernín, one of the three different population centres that used to make up the town of Pamplona before king Charles III, the Noble (Carlos III el Noble) unified them.

Its origins go back at least to the year 1107 when a small Romanesque church that had suffered serious damage in 1276 during the Battle of La Navarrería stood on the same spot. That was when building started on the current building. Work was completed in the year 1297. At the beginning of the XV century, a pentagonal cloister was added to the building on the same spot where the Chapel of the Virgin del Camino was to stand from the XVIII century onwards.

The nucleus of the church is therefore Gothic in style. It has a single nave divided by two aisles and a spacious chancel giving onto five chapels, two of which, the ones at the ends, are rectangular, while the remaining three are five-sided. The main chapel is the most spacious of them all.