Iglesia de Santa Catalina Mártir

The Iglesia de Santa Catalina Mártir stands in the old town of Teulada, built on top of an earlier Valencian Gothic church dating from the late 14th or early 15th century. The current building dates from the last third of the 16th century and was designed with a dual purpose, religious and defensive: by 1562 the Italian engineer J. B. Antonelli had already recommended reinforcing the town's walls or fortifying its church directly, and the latter is what was done, in response to the constant threat of Berber piracy along the Valencian coast.

A church built to withstand attack

Built in Renaissance style with traces of Gothic design, the single nave of four sections is covered by a barrel vault and ends in a five-sided apse with a star-ribbed vault. The windows are deliberately small, in keeping with its role as a refuge: townspeople could shelter inside during raids. The main doorway, with its neoclassical lines, and the other extensions were added later, in the 18th century.

The current bell tower, hexagonal and about 30 metres tall, replaced an earlier round tower; construction began in 1895 and wasn't finished until the first decade of the 20th century. The church, restored in 1979, remains the town's religious centre and stands a short distance from the Castillo de Moraira, another defensive building from the same era of pirate threat, and from the Marjal del Senillar, the municipality's nature reserve.