Our Lady of Meritxell

Our Lady of Meritxell is an Andorran Roman Catholic statue depicting an apparition of the Virgin Mary. Our Lady of Meritxell is the patron saint of Andorra. The original statue dated from the late 12th century. However, the chapel in which it was housed burned down on 8 September 1972, and the statue was destroyed. A replica can be found in the new Meritxell Basilica, designed in 1976 by Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura.

The Catalan philologist Joan Coromines says that Meritxell is a diminutive of merig, from the Latin meridiem. Merig is a name used by shepherds to denote a pasture with lot of sun.The image was canonically crowned by Pope Benedict XV on 8 September 1921.