As soon as Alfonso VIII conquered Cuenca, he commissioned this Anglo-Norman cathedral to please his homesick wife, Eleanor Plantagenet (daughter of England’s Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine). The masons he brought from Normandy constructed it in the same style as the cathedral at Chartres, which was built at precisely the same time. Major renovations during the Renaissance have obscured the original mystical purity of form, and reconstruction after a partial collapse in the 20th century has required further alterations. But the original soaring alabaster columns are still standing, and there’s not another Gothic church like it in Spain. Artistic highlights include the neoclassical altar by Ventura Rodriguez (architect of the Prado), stunning Flemish tapestries, a Gothic statue of Virgen del Sagrario that dates from around the cathedral’s founding, and a number of powerful religious paintings (including a pair of El Grecos). Many of the stained-glass windows, which date from the 1990s, were designed by Cuenca’s resident abstract artists.