Capela de Moreira do Lima - Ponte de Lima, Portugal
Posted by: 
tmob
N 41° 47.256 W 008° 36.951
29T E 531919 N 4626265
The Chapel of Moreira do Lima was declared as public interest on December 5th, 1961.
Waymark Code: WMDMTQ
Location: Viana do Castelo, Portugal
Date Posted: 02/02/2012
Views: 4
Whether its origins, whether their primary function, are not fully clarified. Some opinions states that the building dates back to the early 60's in the eleventh century, a time from which, if true, nothing survived.
By that time, the town had a parish church dedicated to St. Cyprian and from which only remains an commemorating inscription of the completion of the works. But so far, it's not known any remains from the pre-Romanesque chapel of the Holy Spirit.
In the following centuries, the history of the temple is not better known. Most authors recognize that in the second half of the twelfth century by sponsorship of the Templars, the chapel was built, and would be part of "a vast complex of buildings."
The stylistic features of the chapel, however, refute this very remote antiquity, and place the temple in the late thirteenth century, or alternatively, right in the terminal period of the Middle Ages, the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries.
These opposing views may not be actually contradictory, it is natural that in a building from the end of the twelfth century (as seems to indicate the profile of most cantilevers), the portals have been redone.
Structurally, the chapel is part of a type typical from late Romanesque: two rectangular bodies juxtaposed, the nave being taller and wider than the chancel, with inner liner and wooden gable roof resting on heavy dog well decorated corbels.
-- Source