Why go
The church rewards attention to what survived as well as what was lost. The Rosary retable and the chapel of Saint Sebastian connect its interior to local worship, while the scale of the building reflects the town’s growth beyond the medieval enclosure.
The full story
Tossa’s parish church is dedicated to Vincent of Saragossa, also known as Saint Vincent Martyr. It was inaugurated on 29 November 1775 after twenty years of construction. That long building campaign belongs to the period when Tossa was expanding beyond its medieval walls. The interior suffered extensive destruction during the Civil War in 1936. The Rosary retable survived, making it a particularly useful detail to seek out when considering how the church changed through conflict. Its survival gives a more concrete connection to the earlier interior than the building’s size alone. The chapel of Saint Sebastian carries another strand of local history. Devotion to the saint began in the fifteenth or sixteenth century and became associated with the Vot del Poble, the town’s vow. This connection explains why a church dedicated to Vincent also gives Saint Sebastian a prominent place. The two dedications tell different stories: the formal identity of the parish and a devotion rooted in Tossa’s community.