The 18th-century remodeling of Santuari de Sant Salvador

The Santuari de Sant Salvador is a sanctuary in Mallorca situated at the end of Felanitx, at the top of the Puig de Sant Salvador. It is located at an altitude of 509 metres in the southern sector of the Serra de Llevant.

The first records of the Santuari de Sant Salvador date back to 1348, when Pere III granted the town of Felanitx the privilege to build a chapel with the intention of protecting against the plague. This primitive construction included a stone retable from the 15th century representing the Passio Imaginis, a work by Pere Marçol. In 1595, new interventions were documented at the sanctuary related to the grammar school founded in the mid-16th century.

The current appearance of the sanctuary, including the hostelry, dates from the remodeling at the beginning of the 18th century, between 1707 and 1716. Because of a decline in the cult of the Crist de Berit, that retable moved to a side altar, while the main altar was occupied by a retable dedicated to the Mare de Déu de Sant Salvador, created by the Valencian Pere Codonyer. The veneration of this figure dates back centuries, with the tradition counting the finding of the image of the Mare de Déu and the existence of a confraria in its name since 1601.

Between 1824 and 1851, members of the Congregació de Sant Pau i Sant Antoni resided there, and they remained until 1992. The presence of these figures at Sant Salvador is documented as far back as the 14th century.

The image of the Mare de Déu is a 15th-century work that received the honor of coronation in 1934. During those dates, the church was also renovated, including an alabaster retable by Tomàs Vila. At the southern extreme of the mountain, a 37-metre monument dedicated to Crist Rei was built, also by Tomàs Vila. Between 1905 and 1910, a small chapel was built at the foot of the mountain in a Neo-Romanesque style at the site where the image of the Mare de Déu is said to have been found.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons