Pamplona Cathedral

Few cathedrals offer such a window onto the daily lives of those who lived within their walls as Pamplona's does. As well as the church, cloister and sacristies you would expect in any major place of worship, the cellarium, refectory, chapter house and dormitory are still standing here – rooms tied to the communal life of the chapter that, in other Spanish cathedrals, gradually disappeared over the centuries. That is why it is regarded as the most complete cathedral complex surviving in the country.

The undisputed jewel is the cloister, built in the 14th century and considered a marvel of European Gothic, so much so that it is singled out as the finest of its century. It is well worth exploring at a leisurely pace before seeking out another rarity: the kitchen, one of only three surviving examples of a Gothic kitchen in the whole of Europe, and a remarkable testament to how a medieval community worked from the inside.

The building, dedicated to Santa María de la Asunción and now the seat of the Archdiocese of Pamplona and Tudela, is the product of several eras. Some Romanesque rooms still survive, but the overall tone is set by the Gothic of the 14th to 16th centuries, to which both the church and the cloister belong.

The contrast comes when you stand before the west front, the main façade, built at the end of the 18th century. Its clean, restrained neoclassical language makes it one of the purest and most representative works of the style on the Iberian Peninsula, and it serves as a surprising prelude to the medieval atmosphere that awaits inside.

It is no coincidence that in the mid-20th century it caught the attention of scholars such as the architect Leopoldo Torres Balbás, who studied it in depth, and the Hispanist Élie Lambert, born in Bayonne and a specialist in Spanish Gothic. A visit makes it clear why.