The Stone Ship: the Parroquia del Mar in Jávea
in ARCHITETTURA | architecture
© arcomai I A ceramic reproduction of the church, placed in the entrance hall of a city building. View of the church from the street near the beach.
The Church of Our Lady of Loreto in Jávea, on the Costa Blanca in the northern part of the province of Alicante, seems to emerge from its site rather than be built upon it. In the heart of the fishermen’s quarter, the Parroquia del Mar rises among salty streets and low houses like a keel breaking the surface of the sea. From afar it appears as a lighthouse; up close, curved surfaces and cuts of light reveal its plastic vitality. Designed in 1967 by the architecture studio GO‑DB Arquitectos (García Ordoñez, Dexeus Beatty, Bellot Porta and Herrero Cuesta) together with engineer Gómez Perretta, it interprets Mediterranean modernism with a formal freedom grounded in the continuity between structure and material. Every detail testifies to the care for carpentry and the fusion of constructional gesture and form, making it one of the most significant works of Valencian architecture of the twentieth century.
© arcomai I La Parroquia del Mar.
This work was conceived in the years of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), when the Catholic Church radically rethought the sacred space. This hermitage embodies that shift: it abandons hierarchical distance and seeks a communal, essential, contemporary dimension. The great concrete roof, lined inside with red pine and evoking the overturned hull of a ship, is not only a tribute to the maritime neighbourhood but the architectural translation of the conciliar idea of the Church as a people on the move. Here the ship is not an added symbol: it is a structural metaphor, a protective belly echoing the daily labour of fishermen. Inside, the single nave naturally restores the centrality of the assembly introduced by the Council. The space is perceived as a unified body, crossed by light filtering between the ribs of the roof and sliding over the curved surfaces. The concrete ribs open upward like the symbolic gesture of fishermen launching their boat into the sea, suggesting an ascent that does not impose transcendence but allows it to surface.
© GO DB I La Parroquia del Mar. Ground Foor Plan.
The altar, placed beneath the highest point of the roof, does not dominate but converses with the community according to the versus populum liturgy. Here the space does not accompany the rite: it generates it. The exposed concrete, marked by the formwork, expresses an essential spirituality — a Mediterranean brutalism softened by the light of Jávea, which reveals the construction process as an act of sincerity. Next to the nave, the parish rooms form an orthogonal volume that contrasts with the church’s plasticity; between the two, a small garden introduces the threshold between street and liturgical space. The most conciliar aspect is the relationship with the city: the building does not isolate itself but emerges among the fishermen’s houses as a civic organism, belonging to the community before the hierarchy. An everyday, integrated architecture capable of giving the place a shared symbol.
© arcomai I La Parroquia del Mar.
The temple evokes the seabed, furrowed by the boat of salvation that generates waves of white light. The ovoid nave, the hyperbolic section, and the curved roof create a solemn space defined by “waves of light” brushing against the boat of Saint Peter, suspended as if floating. The religious images reflect the post‑war renewal: sober, modern art consistent with the dramatic brutalism of the building. The oval stands out for the purity of its lines and for a continuous, edgeless space open upward. Light, filtered through skylights along the upper edge, glides over the surfaces creating an ethereal atmosphere: a light “messenger of the supernatural order,” carefully studied in its fall. Quartz fragments in the concrete amplify its vibration. At the end of the nave, the raised altar gathers this play of brightness; above it, Esteve Edo’s floating Christ, suspended from the structure, focuses the gaze. Beside it, García Ordóñez’s tabernacle completes the liturgical scene.
© arcomai I La Parroquia del Mar.
Around the nave, twelve columns complete the balance between form, structure, and meaning. They resemble maritime pilings, yet they are the mechanism that makes the building possible: detached from the church’s body, they function as contemporary buttresses, collecting the thrusts of the curved roof and preventing the structure from opening. Made of cast‑in‑place reinforced concrete, they retain the grain of the wooden formwork, a testament to the craftsmanship of Manuel Serra. Arranged in a regular sequence, they form a structural ring that supports the roof and leaves vertical slits through which light enters and descends onto the interior surfaces. Here the structure not only supports: it illuminates. Their symbolism recalls the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles; for others, they evoke angels or the posts of a pier, rooting the building in the culture of the port. They respond to a dual need —closure, inclined support, and reinforcement of the roof structure — and belong as much to the liturgy as to the sea. They support the church as the community supports its own ship.
© arcomai I La Parroquia del Mar.
The bell tower, now under restoration, stands out for its discreet modernist presence: an essential lattice structure, free of ornament, made of the same exposed concrete as the main building and perfectly integrated into the church’s brutalist composition. It does not aspire to the monumentality of traditional bell towers but acts as a measured accent, a pure sign completing the formal balance of the whole. This architectural gesture too seems to embrace the principles of the Second Vatican Council, contributing to an architecture that renounces didacticism to become space, light, and matter. The Parroquia del Mar translates liturgical reform into a sensory experience that intertwines memory, spirituality, and everyday life; it does not represent the sea but embodies it. An overturned ship that continues to sail in the present, carrying with it the community that generated it.
© arcomai I La Parroquia del Mar.
The bell tower, now under restoration, stands out for its discreet modernist presence: an essential lattice structure, free of ornament, made of the same exposed concrete as the main building and perfectly integrated into the church’s brutalist composition. It does not aspire to the monumentality of traditional bell towers but acts as a measured accent, a pure sign completing the formal balance of the whole. This architectural gesture too seems to embrace the principles of the Second Vatican Council, contributing to an architecture that renounces didacticism to become space, light, and matter. The Parroquia del Mar translates liturgical reform into a sensory experience that intertwines memory, spirituality, and everyday life; it does not represent the sea but embodies it. An overturned ship that continues to sail in the present, carrying with it the community that generated it.