The orientation as a signature of cultural identity: The historic churches of Lanzarote

Abstract

The orientation of Christian churches is a well-known distinctive feature of their architecture. There is a general tendency to align their apses in the solar range, favoring orientations close to the east (astronomical equinox), although the alignments in the opposite direction, namely, with the apse towards the west, are not unusual. The case of the churches built in northwest Africa before the arrival of Islam is paradigmatic in this regard, and may reflect earlier traditions. The Canary Islands is the western end of this North African cultural koine, so we thought it would be relevant to study a compact set of old churches in one of the islands of the archipelago, choosing to start our project with Lanzarote. We have measured the orientation of a total of 30 churches built prior to 1810, as well as a few buildings of later times, nearly a complete sample of all the island Christian sanctuaries. The analysis of this sample indicates that a definite orientation pattern was followed on the island but, unlike the standard one often found in most of the Christian world, this prototype is twofold. On the one hand, the representative orientation to the east (or west) is present. However, the sample has also a marked orientation towards the north-northeast, which is as far as we know a pattern exclusive of Lanzarote. We analyze the reasons for this rule and suggest that one possible explanation could be a rather prosaic one, namely, that sometimes earthly needs are more relevant than religious beliefs.