Lugo Cathedral

Before going in, it is worth walking round the building to the north door, the great Romanesque jewel of the ensemble. Beneath a 16th-century portico with a star vault, a seated 12th-century marble Pantocrator presides over the doorway, and from the centre hangs a curious capital-shaped pendant depicting the Last Supper, with St John asleep beside Christ. A Latin distich describes the scene, and in it the word DOMINI is abbreviated with a rounded D related to our @ sign. The pendant even made it onto postage stamps in 1969.

The cathedral we see today was begun in 1129 by Master Raimundo and considered finished in 1273, although the following centuries dressed it in Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassical garb. The main façade, designed by Julián Sánchez Bort in the late 18th century, was not completed until the 19th, with the two towers by Nemesio Cobreros. Earlier, a church built here by Bishop Odoario was so beautiful that Alfonso II took it as the model for Oviedo Cathedral.

Inside, the Latin-cross plan with three naves and an ambulatory leads to an exceptional choir: Francisco de Moure's, finished in 1624, is the only one in a Galician cathedral still standing in the central nave, with its carved figures in medallions and a profusion of naturalistic motifs. In the transept rest the fragments of Cornelis de Holanda's altarpiece, broken after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755.

At the east end opens the Baroque Chapel of the Virgen de los Ojos Grandes, designed by Fernando de Casas Novoa in 1726, with an altarpiece by Miguel de Romay that ranks among the finest Galician Baroque. Lugo's patroness, sung by Alfonso X in one of his cantigas, shares the limelight with St Froilán, the local patron saint, who has his own chapel with his statue carved by Moure.

The privilege of perpetual exposition of the Blessed Sacrament explains the chalice and host on the coats of arms of Lugo and Galicia, and why Lugo is known as the city of the Sacrament. Since 2015 the cathedral has been a World Heritage Site as part of the Routes of Santiago de Compostela.