Toledo Cathedral — cathedral
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Toledo Cathedral

Catedral de Toledo

  • 2 min read
  • 39.857° N 4.024° W

Interesting facts

  • Arfe's great monstrance is assembled from about 5,600 pieces held by 12,500 bolts and carries some 260 statuettes.
  • Around 18 kg of gold and 183 kg of silver went into the monstrance, and tradition says it contains the first gold Columbus brought back from the Americas.
  • Pope Urban II recognised the church in 1088 as the primatial cathedral of the kingdom, just three years after Toledo's conquest by Alfonso VI.
  • According to tradition, the Muslim jurist Abu Walid calmed the city after the mosque was seized in 1087, and the chapter honoured him with an effigy in the main chapel.
  • The cathedral is lit by more than 750 stained-glass windows made between the 14th and 16th centuries.
  • The spire of the bell tower is topped by three crowns, in imitation of a papal tiara.
  • The dome of the Mozarabic Chapel was designed in the 17th century by Jorge Manuel Theotocópuli, the son of El Greco.
  • The Chapterhouse walls carry portraits of every archbishop of Toledo, from Saint Eugene onwards, beneath a painted coffered ceiling of 1508–1510.
  • The Chapel of the New Monarchs keeps the armour of Duarte de Almeida, the Portuguese standard-bearer who lost both arms at the Battle of Toro in 1476.
  • Several kings of Castile lie here, including Alfonso VII, Sancho IV, Henry II, John I and Henry III.

Why it is worth it

Toledo's cathedral fills the heart of a hilltop city that was the capital of Visigothic Spain, then a Muslim city, then the seat of the primate of Spain. The site repeats that history: the Gothic church replaced the main mosque, which had itself replaced a Visigothic church, and its five-aisled plan and cloister are thought to follow the prayer hall and courtyard of the mosque. Work began in 1226 under Ferdinand III, modelled on the cathedral of Bourges, with a French master known only as Martín and then Petrus Petri in charge; the last Gothic vaults of the nave were closed in 1493. The single tower on the west front, about 92 metres high, was designed mostly by Alvar Martínez; a planned second tower was abandoned when the ground proved unstable.

The interior is dense with things to see, so it helps to choose. Start with the high altar retable, commissioned by Cardinal Cisneros and made between 1497 and 1504, a five-storey wall of gilded, painted late-Gothic carving. Walk round the ambulatory to the Transparente, Narciso Tomé's Baroque showpiece of 1729–1732: a hole was cut through the Gothic vault so that morning light falls on a cloud of marble, bronze and stucco angels around the tabernacle, and the contrast with the surrounding stone is startling. Then the choir, where Alonso Berruguete and Felipe Vigarny carved the upper stalls in the full confidence of the Spanish Renaissance.

The sacristy is effectively a picture gallery under a ceiling frescoed by Luca Giordano. It holds more than a dozen paintings by El Greco, headed by his Disrobing of Christ over the altar, alongside works by Goya, Van Dyck and others. In the Treasury Chapel stands the silver and gold monstrance made by Enrique de Arfe between 1517 and 1524, over three metres tall, which is carried through the streets each year at Corpus Christi. Finally, the Mozarabic Chapel, founded by Cisneros, still celebrates the old Hispano-Mozarabic rite, a liturgy that survived the Muslim centuries among Toledo's Christians.

Getting there

The cathedral is in the old town of Toledo, about 0.2 km from the centre. High-speed Avant trains from Madrid Atocha reach Toledo in about 35 minutes, with around a dozen services a day. The nearest airport is Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas (MAD), about 80 km away.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Castilla–La Mancha 6The Most Beautiful Places in Spain 150The Most Beautiful Medieval Churches in Spain 6The Most Beautiful Cathedrals in Spain 10The Most Beautiful Churches in Spain 11The Most Beautiful Medieval Sacred Places in Spain 13The Most Beautiful Medieval Places in Spain 17The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in Spain 30The Most Beautiful Medieval Cathedrals 48The Most Beautiful Medieval Churches 57The Most Beautiful Cathedrals 81The Most Beautiful Medieval Sacred Places 123The Most Beautiful Churches 186The Most Beautiful Medieval Places 204The Most Beautiful Sacred Places 623

From the encyclopaedia

The Primatial Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption, is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Toledo, Spain. It is the seat of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Toledo. Since 1088, it holds the honorific title of Primatial, granted by Urban II, establishing a higher rank over the rest in the Iberian Peninsula.

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