Burgos was the capital of Old Castile for almost five hundred years, the home of El Cid in the eleventh century, and the base, two centuries later, of Fernando III, the reconqueror of Murcia, Córdoba and Seville. It was Fernando who began the city’s famous Gothic cathedral, one of the greatest in all Spain, and Burgos is a firm station on the pilgrim route. During the Civil War, Franco temporarily installed his Fascist government in the city and Burgos owes much of its modern expansion to Franco’s “Industrial Development Plan”, a strategy to shift the country’s wealth away from Catalunya and the Basque Country and into Castile. Even now, such connotations linger – the Capitanía General building still displays a 1936 plaque (admittedly, under protective glass) honouring Franco, the “supreme authority of the nation”.
But Burgos is also a changed city, much scrubbed and restored over the last few years due to its candidature for European City of Culture for 2016. Every paving stone in the centre looks to have been relaid, and while it’s no longer a clearly medieval city, the handsome buildings, squares and riverfront of the old town are an attractive prospect for a night’s stay. Despite the encroaching suburban sprawl and a population of almost 200,000, when it comes down to it, Burgos really isn’t that big. You can easily see everything in the centre in a day, and while its lesser churches inevitably tend to be eclipsed by the cathedral, the two wonderful monasteries on the outskirts are by no means overshadowed.
Catedral
The casco histórico is totally dominated by the Catedral, one of the most extraordinary achievements of Gothic art. Its spires can be seen above the rooftops from all over town, and it’s an essential first stop in Burgos. The cathedral 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 interior
Moorish influences can be seen in the cathedral’s central dome (1568), supported on four thick piers that fan out into remarkably 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 below. Otherwise, perhaps the most striking thing about the vast interior is the size and number of its side chapels, with the octagonal Capilla del Condestable, behind the high altar, possibly the most splendid of all, featuring a ceiling designed to form two concentric eight-pointed stars. In the Capilla de Santa Ana, the magnificent retablo is by Gil de Siloé, a Flanders-born craftsman whose son Diego crafted the adjacent double stairway, the glorious Escalera Dorada.