Spain Guide
Castilla y León and La Rioja
The Catedral
Opening time: Daily 9.30am–7.30pm, last entrance at 6.30pm, closed Sun between 3pm and 3.30pm
Price: €4, free second and fourth Sun of month in the afternoon
The Casco Histórico is totally dominated by the Catedral, one of the most extraordinary achievements of Gothic art. It has emerged from a lengthy period of restoration, looking cleaner than it has for centuries, though visiting it has been reduced to something of a production line, with a separate visitor centre, well-stocked gift-shop and one-way flow inside to keep tourists from worshippers.
The most striking thing about the vast interior is the size and number of side chapels. The official tourist route passes two of the most important, around the back of the choir. The Capilla del Santísimo Cristo de Burgos contains a cloyingly realistic image of Christ (c.1300), endowed with real human hair and nails and covered with the withered hide of a water buffalo, popularly believed to be human skin. Legend has it that the icon was modelled directly from the Crucifixion and that it requires a shave and a manicure every eighth day. The Capilla de Santa Tecla, opposite, has a distinctive star-shaped vault, a form adapted from the Moorish "honeycomb" vaults of Granada. Both chapels are highly venerated places of worship and closed to anyone clutching a cathedral ticket.
At the Capilla de Santa Ana, the magnificent retablo is by Gil de Siloé, a Flanders-born craftsman whose son Diego crafted the glorious Escalera Dorada, a double stairway next door. Moorish influences can also be seen in the cathedral's central dome (1568), supported on four thick piers that fan out into delicate buttresses – a worthy setting for the tomb of El Cid and his wife Jimena, marked by a simple slab of pink veined marble in the floor, opposite the magnificent Coro.
The octagonal Capilla del Condestable, behind the high altar, is the most splendid chapel of all, with a ceiling designed to form two eight-pointed stars, one within the other. From here the route leads into the spacious two-storey cloisters, and beyond this to a series of chapels that house the Museo Catedralício with its religious treasures and El Cid's marriage contract.