Sant Sadurní de Malanyeu Church

The church is first documented at the end of the 10th century in the act of consecration of La Seu d'Urgell. In 1077 the counts of Cerdanya ceded to the monastery of Ripoll some lands in Malenyeu and La Nou. A year later, Viscount Udalard I of Besalú and his wife Ermessendis made a new transfer of property located in the place of Malanyeu in the Ripollen monastery. The church, however, continued under the control of the bishopric of Urgell.In 1312 the church appears like parochial in a pastoral visit to the deanery of the Berguedà. Already in the 18th century it had lost this condition, becoming a suffragan of Sant Martí de la Nou.
The temple consists of a single nave covered with a barrel vault. This nave is topped on the east by a semicircular apse.
The apse, made of cornered but unpolished ashlars arranged in regular rows, is externally decorated with a frieze of blind arches.
Later both the head and the nave were raised. We cannot see the whole apse because it is partially hidden by the rectory.
In the central part of the apse drum, a half-pointed, double-slit window opened, which was blinded when the baroque altarpiece in the presbytery was placed and has recently been restored.
Also in the 18th century a chapel was added on the north side of the temple and the bell tower.
The temple is accessed through an open door in the west wall, formed by two arches in gradation and followed externally by a dust cover.