Burgos Cathedral

Burgos Cathedral is the rare Gothic church that reads as a single signature on the skyline: two thirteenth-century towers crowned in the fifteenth century by openwork spires of stone lace, so fine that the sky shows through them. The first stone was laid on 20 June 1221 under King Ferdinand III and Bishop Maurice, on a plan that looked squarely to France — the west front recalls Paris and Reims, the interior elevation Bourges. It is also the only cathedral in Spain inscribed by UNESCO on its own, in 1984, rather than as part of a historic town.

The spires came from Juan de Colonia, a master from Cologne who seems to have known the drawings for Cologne's own towers, which were not actually built until centuries later. His family went on to shape much of what makes Burgos extraordinary: the Constable's Chapel behind the high altar, a late-Gothic funerary chapel of the Isabelline style finished with sculpture by Diego de Siloé and Felipe Bigarny, and the first lantern over the crossing. When that lantern collapsed in the sixteenth century, Juan de Vallejo raised the present one, an octagonal two-storey tower whose star-shaped ribs seem to hang in mid-air above the transept.

Inside, the building is less a single space than a sequence of chapels, portals and treasuries. The Golden Staircase, built by Diego de Siloé in the early 1520s after Bramante's stair in the Vatican Belvedere, climbs from the north transept to the Coronería door, whose threshold lies several metres above the nave floor. The cathedral also holds the tomb of El Cid and his wife Jimena, and the Papamoscas — the "flycatcher", an articulated figure that opens its mouth as it strikes the hours.

Outside, the Santa María façade faces a stepped square, with the statues of eight early kings of Castile set under the tracery of the upper gallery. Burgos, once the symbolic capital of the kingdom of Castile and a bishopric since 1075, grew rich on trade, and the cathedral — built of limestone from the nearby quarries of Hontoria de la Cantera — was the measure of that ambition. It stands in the heart of the historic centre, a few steps from the old streets.

Getting there

The cathedral stands in the centre of Burgos. The nearest airport by distance is Seve Ballesteros–Santander (SDR), about 121 km to the north; many travellers instead arrive via Madrid and continue by road or rail.