The Churches of the Vall de Boí are a set of nine Early Romanesque churches declared World Heritage Site by UNESCO and located in the Vall de Boí, in the Catalan comarca of Alta Ribagorça (Province of Lleida).

In 1904 and 1906, the Hiking Club of Catalonia organised the first trips to inter-alia the Vall de Boí, with the aim of collecting plans, photographs and taking notes.

By 1919, many intermediaries were involved in buying and selling these works, which went mostly to museums and private collections within the United States.

In one documented case, Italian and Polish craftsmen were paid by unscrupulous Barcelona industrialist and art collector Lluis Planidura to remove frescoes in isolated churches and sold the apse of the church of Santa Maria de Mur to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1921 (entirely legally) before an outcry by Spanish artists and curators had him stopped.

[1][2] The Taüll region became an exception to this trend, since the local population refused to allow the frescoes and other art works to leave their churches.

Finally, it was agreed that the frescoes would be best kept in the National Museum of Catalan Art (MNAC), secure from possible theft or unscrupulous transactions.

A team of Italian restorers carried out the task of removing the paintings from the walls and, in some cases, replacing the works with in situ reproductions.

Interest by art academics and professionals has led to a systematic study of all other remaining Romanesque murals of the Vall de Boí area, and most of these are now in safe protection at MNAC in Barcelona and at the Museum of Vic.

The Pantocrator of the church, now preserved in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC), is considered one of the best examples of Romanesque art in Catalonia.

The bell tower, typical example of Lombard architecture of the Vall de Boí, is of six stories, with a total height of 23 meters.

Situated at an altitude of 1,386 meters, in the small town of Durrës, the church is documented for the first time in the 11th century when it belonged to the County of Pallars.