Burgos Cathedral

Burgos Cathedral is the great Gothic cathedral of Castile: begun in 1221 on the model of the cathedrals of northern France, crowned two centuries later with openwork spires by a German master, and filled with chapels, tombs and altarpieces. El Cid is buried under its crossing. It was listed by UNESCO on its own in 1984, and it stands on the pilgrim road to Santiago.

A French cathedral in Castile

In 1219 Bishop Maurice of Burgos escorted a German princess, Beatrice of Swabia, to Burgos to marry the young King Ferdinand III. Maurice had seen the new cathedrals of France, and in July 1221, with the king present, he laid the first stone of a Gothic cathedral to replace the Romanesque one. The body of the church went up quickly, in the French manner, and was in use by the middle of the 13th century.

Two hundred years later the bishops brought in Juan de Colonia, Hans of Cologne, who built the lacy openwork spires on the west towers in the 1440s and 1450s. His son Simón built the Constable’s Chapel, and over the next century the cathedral filled with Renaissance work. Its first crossing lantern collapsed in 1539; the Chapter met the next morning and resolved to rebuild it, and the new lantern was finished in the 1560s.

The visitor’s cheat sheet

What to see

The Sarmental door

Visitors go in through the Puerta del Sarmental, the south transept door of about 1230–40. In its tympanum Christ sits in majesty among the four Evangelists, each writing at his desk, attributed to a French sculptor from the workshop of Amiens Cathedral.

The crossing and El Cid

At the centre of the church, the crossing lantern rises 59 metres outside, a vault of openwork stone in the shape of an eight-pointed star, set on four massive round piers so that it would not fall again. In the floor beneath it, a plain marble slab marks the grave of El Cid, Castile’s great medieval warrior, and his wife Jimena, brought here in 1921.

The Golden Staircase

In the north transept the Coronería door, now kept closed, is set almost eight metres above the floor of the church. Commissioned in 1519, Diego de Siloé’s Golden Staircase links it to the nave, a double flight of Renaissance steps with gilded iron balustrades by the French smith Maestro Hilario. It is said to have inspired the grand staircase of the Paris Opéra.

The Constable’s Chapel

Behind the high altar, the Constable’s Chapel, begun in 1482 by Simón de Colonia for the Constable of Castile Pedro Fernández de Velasco and his wife Mencía de Mendoza, is almost a church in itself. Its octagonal star vault has an openwork centre that lets in light from above, and the founders lie in marble in the middle of the floor.

The Papamoscas and the Christ of Burgos

High in the nave, at the west end, the Papamoscas, the “flycatcher”, a figure in a red coat, strikes the hours on a bell and opens his mouth as he does so; noon is the time to see him. In the first chapel off the south aisle is the Christ of Burgos, a 14th-century crucifix with real hair, its body covered in animal hide, much venerated across Spain and Latin America.

The cloister and museum

The two-storey Gothic cloister, of the late 13th century, was heavily restored around 1900. Off it are chapels that hold the cathedral museum, with its altarpieces, tapestries and treasures.

Don’t miss

• The lantern An eight-pointed star of stone.
• El Cid Under the crossing.
• The Golden Staircase Renaissance stairs to a door in the wall.
• The Papamoscas At noon.
• The Constable’s Chapel A church within the church.

Insider tips

More churches in Spain

• Santiago de Compostela Cathedral — where the pilgrim road through Burgos ends.
• Toledo Cathedral — another great Gothic cathedral of Castile.
• Valencia Cathedral — the Gothic cathedral of the Mediterranean coast, with the Holy Chalice.

See all the Spanish churches in this guide →