Lourdes Square and the Basilica

Today's church is made up of two construction eras: old stone masonry remains at ground level, and above it rises a square tower created during the restoration. Pointed arches and stained-glass windows preserve the neo-Gothic silhouette, although the stone base was later reinforced with reinforced concrete. Before the present church, there stood a cramped chapel with a thatched roof, and parishioners raised money for the large church through donations, bazaars, and lotteries. A parish is active behind the façade, and behind the square lies a park with a bust of the archbishop who sought an independent parish for Chapinero.

During the first years of construction, Julián Lombana, who oversaw the work on the church, fell from the scaffolding. He lost one arm and one leg. Lombana began as an assistant on construction sites and earned his living through design and supervision: the fall threatened to take his profession away from him. He survived, returned to work, and continued building in Bogotá. He remained in charge of the Church of Our Lady of Lourdes for many more years, but never saw it completed.

The commission came from Vicente Arbeláez, the Archbishop of Bogotá. In the growing suburban area of Chapinero stood a cramped chapel with a thatched roof, and the archbishop was seeking to establish an independent parish here. In eighteen seventy-five, he commissioned Lombana to build a large church with pointed arches, stained-glass windows, and a high central tower. On December eighth, Arbeláez laid the cornerstone.

He chose an entirely new name for the church. Lourdes is a French town where, in eighteen fifty-eight, fourteen-year-old Bernadette Soubirous claimed that the Virgin Mary had appeared to her. According to the girl, the woman told her to ask the priests to establish a chapel at the grotto and hold processions there. The parish priest did not believe her and demanded that she name the woman who had appeared. After an investigation lasting four years, the Catholic Church recognized Bernadette's account. Just seventeen years after the first reports of the apparitions, Arbeláez dedicated the new church in Bogotá to Our Lady of Lourdes.

Even before the foundation was laid, an image of Our Lady of Lourdes was ceremonially installed in Chapinero. According to an account from the time, sixteen thousand people gathered for the ceremony on August twenty-second, eighteen seventy-five. Then, for years, worshippers brought donations and held bazaars and lotteries to pay for construction. Services were held in the unfinished building as well. The church became the center of Chapinero before the builders finished its façade.

The square followed the parishioners. Luis Rivas, a man from Bogotá, donated land and money for the first park in front of the still unfinished church. In eighteen eighty-six, it opened as Rivas Park. Later, the Argentine diplomatic mission paid for a new garden with a pond and a footbridge, and in nineteen twenty the park was renamed Republic of Argentina Square. By the middle of the century, however, residents were already calling it Lourdes Square, after the church. The name of the donated park and the official dedication to another country disappeared from everyday speech; what remained was the name of the image for which a procession thousands strong had once come here.

Lombana died in nineteen sixteen. A year later, an earthquake brought down part of the tower: six people died beneath its rubble. The damage was so severe that demolishing the church was discussed. The city council chose restoration and allocated a subsidy for it in nineteen nineteen. From nineteen twenty-five, architect Arturo Jaramillo worked to complete the church, using reinforced concrete over the original stone base.

Today, a parish is active here, and since two thousand sixteen the church has held the title of minor basilica, conferred by Pope Francis. In front of it is an open urban square, and behind it is a park with a bust of Vicente Arbeláez. The masonry begun by Lombana remains at the base of the present building; the square tower above it belongs to the design with which Jaramillo replaced the destroyed tower.