Dolmen Na Cristiana (also called Balma de Na Cristiana) is a dolmen in the municipality of L’Albère in the eastern Pyrenees. It is located near the Spanish border at an altitude of 650 metres and is one of the better preserved of the Roussillon dolmens.
The largest dolmen in the Pyrénées-Orientales department consists of seven bearing stones, which support the gneiss capstone, form a space of around 2.0 × 1.0 m and have a height of around 1.0 m. The stones are roughly square and roughly worked. The axial passage, mostly made of dry masonry, has not been preserved. In terms of shape, the Neolithic dolmen was built between the middle and the end of the 3rd millennium BCE.
The “Na” in the name is the feminine form of a person. “Na Cristiana” is a woman named “Cristiana”. “Na” is the short form of “Dona” in Catalan. “En” refers to the masculine form and can be found on the Serrat d’En Jacques dolmen. The relationship to Christ can have arisen in two ways. Either it was given to the pagan place of worship when it was Christianized, or it is the name of a certain Cristiana who had a relationship with this place.
