Culture

Cap de Port Church

Here, where Fornells Bay ends, between Son Parc and Ses Salines, you will find Cap d'es Port Church. It is an early Christian construction dating back to the end of the 5th century AD or the beginning of the 6th century AD. Discovered in 1958, its entrance is located on Camí de Cavalls Nature Trail.

The church is organised around a central nave facing east, around which there are several rooms that have undergone structural changes over time, such as renovations and extensions.

Beneath the central nave, taking advantage of the unevenness of the ground, there was a vault under the apse, which had a Greek cross floor plan and was rectangular on the outside. This vault was discovered during digs carried out in 1959 and later between 1975 and 1985, and was connected to the sanctuary by stairs on the west side. This is where the church's entrance door and the raised choir, covered with a vaulted ceiling and built with large ashlars of rough stone, were found collapsed inside the nave. The presence of double walls on both sides of the nave could perhaps be explained by the need to support this heavy structure.

The baptismal font, in the shape of a four-pointed star, is located in a room at the north-east end of the building, paved with opus signinum, ancient Roman cement, and with plastered and painted walls. Five burial chambers with tombs covered with slabs of the same material have also been discovered inside the church.

Some of the church's mural paintings have been recovered, with numerous graffiti in Latin and Greek, pilasters, columns, capitals and bases, two fragments of the same marble table - possibly an altar table -, various objects including a stone cross, a bronze cross, which must have belonged to a chain or suspension element, and two glass paste jewels, as well as a Roman stone sarcophagus which is kept in the Museum of Menorca.