Palacio Episcopal de Astorga

In a small cathedral town of the Spanish meseta, Antoni Gaudí built a castle for a bishop. The Episcopal Palace of Astorga rises beside the cathedral like a building from a fairy tale: four round corner towers with pointed caps, a deep dry moat, a porch of three great flared arches and a skyline of pinnacles and chimneys, all in pale grey granite. It is one of only a handful of Gaudí buildings outside Catalonia.

The old palace burned down in 1886. Bishop Joan Baptista Grau, who like Gaudí came from the Catalan town of Reus and had known him since his years in Tarragona, gave the commission to his friend. Busy in Barcelona with the Palau Güell and the early Sagrada Família, Gaudí first designed the building from photographs and drawings sent to him from Astorga. The first stone was laid on 24 June 1889, and Gaudí visited the works repeatedly, bringing Catalan craftsmen he trusted. It belongs to his neo-Gothic phase, when he was reworking medieval forms in his own way, and the ground plan is a Greek cross within a square, with the chapel projecting at the back like a small church with its own apse.

When Bishop Grau died in 1893, Gaudí quarrelled with the cathedral chapter and walked away, leaving the top floor and roof unfinished. Years later he is said to have told a royal visitor that he had not left but been thrown out. After a long pause the building was completed by the León diocesan architect Ricardo García Guereta, who followed Gaudí's layout with a more conventional hand; the chapel was consecrated in 1913. Even then no bishop ever lived in it. It served various uses through the 20th century and was finally turned into the Museo de los Caminos, a museum of religious art devoted to the Way of Saint James.

Astorga itself was Asturica Augusta, an important Roman town, and keeps long stretches of its walls. It lies on the Camino Francés, the main pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela, so the palace and the cathedral beside it greet a steady stream of walkers. Gaudí's other work in the province, the Casa Botines, stands in the city of León.

Getting there

The palace stands in the centre of Astorga, next to the cathedral. The city of León lies about 45 km to the east; San Andrés del Rabanedo, on León's western edge, is about 40 km away. Astorga has a railway station on the line between León and Galicia. León Airport (LEN) is about 36 km away.