Basílica de Santa María de la Esperanza Macarena, Seville

The Macarena Basilica is a Catholic church dedicated to María Santísima de la Esperanza Macarena, and it serves as the home of her brotherhood. Its neobaroque character is especially clear in the richly worked altarpieces and devotional chapels. Construction began in 1941 and ended in 1949, under the direction of Sevillian architect Aurelio Gómez Millán.

The building received the dignity of a minor basilica in 1966, becoming the earliest Sevillian temple to hold that dignity. Look at the main altar: its sanctuary houses the Esperanza Macarena, an anonymous image made at the end of the seventeenth century or the beginning of the eighteenth. The altar ensemble was created in 1949 by Juan Pérez Calvo and Rafael Fernández del Toro, with sculpture by Luis Ortega Bru and gilding by Antonio Sánchez.

It rises 12 m and is arranged in two bodies with an attic carrying allegories of the three theological virtues. In the chapel devoted to Jesús de la Sentencia, you can see an image made by Felipe de Morales in 1654. At the foot of the church, the Hispanic altar gathers painted patron figures from across Latin America, presided over by a 1703 painting of Mexico’s Virgin of Guadalupe. The basilica’s museum adds 800 m² across three floors, presenting the brotherhood’s processional and liturgical heritage.