Cathedral of Santa María (Sigüenza)

The first thing that strikes you on arriving at the Cathedral of Santa María in Sigüenza is that it looks more like a castle than a church. The two towers of its main façade, topped with merlons, give it the profile of a fortress, and this is no accident: like other religious buildings of its time, it had to serve as a fortress-church, hence the nickname by which it came to be known, the fortis seguntina.

Its story begins in January 1124, when Bishop Bernard of Agen took the town from the Muslims during the reign of Queen Urraca, daughter of Alfonso VI. Bernard had been appointed bishop three years earlier, even before the conquest, by the Archbishop of Toledo, Bernard of Sédirac, a monk of Cluny, at a time when the influence of that order was spreading across Castile. He later obtained privileges and grants from Alfonso VII with which to foster the new settlement and unite its two parts: the upper town, around the castle, and the lower, Mozarabic town, beside the River Henares.

Construction went on for centuries, and each bishop left the mark of the style of his day. The nave was built in the full Gothic period, in the 15th century, when the crossing vaults were also completed under the episcopate of the future Cardinal Mendoza. The decorative work was not finished until the 18th century, which makes the building a genuine journey through the evolution of art.

Once through its doors, the atmosphere is above all Gothic. Much of that impression is due to the 16th-century alterations, when the small Romanesque apsidal chapels at the sides were demolished to make way for the ambulatory. It is well worth walking round it at a leisurely pace, imagining the original church that once stood here, before heading back outside to gaze at those towers that recall its frontier past.