Burgos Cathedral

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Pilgrims walking the Camino to Santiago come over the hill into Burgos and see it at once: a cathedral of openwork stone, its twin spires pierced like lace, begun in 1221 by King Ferdinand III and Bishop Mauricio and worked on for three centuries after. Inside, the crossing is crowned by the cimborrio, an eight-pointed star vault of filigree ribs that pours light straight down into the heart of the church, and beneath that light lie Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, El Cid, and his wife Jimena, brought here long after their deaths. The Golden Staircase climbs a wall it was built to solve, the octagonal Constable Chapel holds its founders in Carrara marble beneath another star of stone, and the choir stalls are carved with scenes both solemn and sly. High on the nave wall a clockwork figure called the Papamoscas, the flycatcher, opens his mouth and strikes the hour, to the delight of children below. The first Spanish cathedral inscribed by UNESCO in its own right, Burgos is still, above all, a pilgrims' church.