Exojo

The building, built of ashlar stone, stands out for its Latin cross plan, its doorway and its tower. The Latin cross plan has a very marked transept and a trapezoidal head. In the section before the transept there are niches accessible through semicircular arches. The elevation is organized by double pilasters that mark the sections of the nave, over which a molded cornice runs, with semicircular windows that illuminate the nave and the transept. The nave is covered by a barrel vault with lunettes on pointed transoms, while the transept and the main chapel have star vaults of complex design with decorated keystones.

The cover is composed of two bodies. At the bottom, flanked by two columns, is the door. In the upper body, a niche flanked by pilasters houses a stone sculpture. The slender baroque tower, contemporary with the façade, is attached to the church on the epistle side. With a square floor plan, it consists of a long and solid shaft surrounded by pilasters at the corners, on which sits the octagonal bell body, with upper half-points and oculi, topped by a dome and lantern. The decoration includes a stone balustrade with vases and pyramids alternating with volutes at the top.

The octagonal bell tower is topped by a small dome and lantern, with a body that has giant columns with composite style capitals. Classified within the typical bell towers of the 16th and 17th centuries, it contributes to defining the architectural image characteristic of the Baroque era.

The choir is located at the back, on a lowered arch that rests on 18th century recessed pillars. Under the choir, in the baptismal chapel, there is a large stone font from the 16th century with a spherical lid decorated with gallons and a nine-sided polygonal top.

The exterior of the church is made up of small rectangular ashlars and walls punctuated by diagonal buttresses in the transept. On the epistle side, there is a semicircular window and two other windows of the same design in each bay. On this side you can also see a sundial from 1800.

On the gospel side, at mid-height, there are carvings of the Fathers of the Church, late 16th century, which probably formed part of the main altarpiece. These figures, with an elongated canon and great expressive force, preserve their primitive polychromy.

In the altarpiece of the Virgin of the Rosary, a Gothic image from the mid-14th century is venerated on a Rococo altar from the second half of the 18th century. The Virgin, with a somewhat rough appearance, covers herself with an angular folded cloak and carries her Son on her left knee carrying a book and a flower.

The Inmaculada, from the beginning of the 1602th century, was made in XNUMX by Juan de Araoz. The Mannerist altarpiece consists of a bench interrupted by corbels with atlantes, a body with three sections with columns with fluted shafts and a straight attic topped by a triangular pediment. Saint Helena, Saint Apollonia and Saint Barbara are represented in relief on the bench. In the body, next to the Immaculate Conception, are San Sebastián and San Roque. In the attic, an imposing Eternal Father, a replica of Michelangelo's Moses, is flanked by children.

The main altarpiece, in Romanesque style, was made around 1570 by Pedro Arbulo, a Rioja disciple of Miguel Ángel Buonarroti, whose reliefs were used in the current neoclassical altarpiece made in 1797 by Juan Martínez de la Fuente. This altarpiece presents a body with three streets with smooth columns and composite style capitals. Juan Martínez de Gastaminza, a sculptor from Olazagutia, also participated, who in 1588 gave Bernabé Imberto the completion of the altarpiece, including the images of the Nativity and the Assumption. Among the notable elements of the altarpiece are the Descent, the Garden Prayer, the Annunciation, the Flight into Egypt and the Virgin and Child by Imberto.

On the sides of the main altarpiece there are two large canvases that represent the Birth and the Epiphany. The paintings of Saint Peter and Saint Paul separate two other canvases, the Visitation and the Betrothal of the Virgin, the work of Matías Garrido, similar to one from the sacristy of the Mondoñedo cathedral.

On the epistle side is the Sacred Heart, a work by Juan de Araoz from the 1765th century, with Saint Catherine, Saint Lucy and Saint Agatha on the bench, and the carving of El Salvador in the attic. In the center of the church, in a niche, is the altarpiece of the Holy Christ, in the Rococo style, made between 1770 and XNUMX by Dionisio de Villodas and Lucas de Mena, with polychrome by Francisco de Azedo.

The baroque sacristy, attached to the chancel on the epistle side, is a rectangular room divided into two sections, one trapezoidal covered by a half-barrel vault and another square with a lowered dome on pendentives. Presided over by a crucified Christ from the first half of the 2016th century, the sacristy also houses a baroque image of the Dolorosa with glass eyes and retouched polychrome, and a chest of drawers decorated with plant themes and cherub heads, restored in XNUMX by the Larumbe brothers from Espronceda.