Catedral de Girona
Girona’s magnificent cathedral is worth at least a couple of hours of your time, but first you’ve got to get there. The steep, 90-step staircase that leads up to the Baroque façade is not for the fainthearted (wheelchair access is via Plaça dels Apostols). (Fitness enthusiasts race up and down the steps in the early morning.)
Once inside, you’ll find yourself in the vast nave built in the 14th century. At 23m (75 ft.), it is the world’s broadest Gothic nave. An excellent audio guide explains, with the help of architectural models, the cathedral’s evolution from Romanesque beginnings through its Gothic expansion and Baroque embellishments. It continues with some of the many legends surrounding the building, including how the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne reputedly founded the cathedral having personally freed the city from Muslim rule in 785. Although his Frankish forces did, there’s no evidence he ever visited Girona.
Most of the cathedral’s extensive art collection is displayed in the treasury. Girona’s greatest single treasure is the Tapestry of the Creation, an exquisite piece of medieval embroidery depicting the story of Genesis, which also serves as a calendar of the months and seasons. Other important pieces include the Códex del Beatus, an illustrated commentary on the Book of the Apocalypse, and the Casket of Hisham II that belonged to the Muslim Caliph of Córdoba. Both are more than 1000 years old.
From the cathedral’s Chapel of Hope, a door leads out to the Romanesque cloister, which has an unusual trapezoid layout. The cloister gallery, with a double colonnade, has a series of friezes that narrate scenes from the New Testament. Guides tout them as the prize jewel of Catalan Romanesque art, but even more fantastic are the carved capitals of the cloister, which vividly narrate moral tales in intricate twists of stone. From here you can see the Torre de Carlemany (Charlemagne’s Tower), the only surviving section of the 12th century church.
Pop culture note: If those stairs up to the cathedral look familiar, that’s because they appear in a famous scene from the epic TV show Game of Thrones. The cathedral doubled as the Great Sept of Baelor, where massed Tyrell soldiers confronted the Faith Militant.
Several medieval sites, including the Banys Arabs as Braavos and Sant Pere de Galligants monastery as Oldtown, were used in season 6 of the series, and themed walking tours are popular.
Girona’s magnificent cathedral is worth at least a couple of hours of your time, but first you’ve got to get there. The steep, 90-step staircase that leads up to the Baroque façade is not for the fainthearted (wheelchair access is via Plaça dels Apostols). (Fitness enthusiasts race up and down the steps in the early morning.)
Once inside, you’ll find yourself in the vast nave built in the 14th century. At 23m (75 ft.), it is the world’s broadest Gothic nave. An excellent audio guide explains, with the help of architectural models, the cathedral’s evolution from Romanesque beginnings through its Gothic expansion and Baroque embellishments. It continues with some of the many legends surrounding the building, including how the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne reputedly founded the cathedral having personally freed the city from Muslim rule in 785. Although his Frankish forces did, there’s no evidence he ever visited Girona.
Most of the cathedral’s extensive art collection is displayed in the treasury. Girona’s greatest single treasure is the Tapestry of the Creation, an exquisite piece of medieval embroidery depicting the story of Genesis, which also serves as a calendar of the months and seasons. Other important pieces include the Códex del Beatus, an illustrated commentary on the Book of the Apocalypse, and the Casket of Hisham II that belonged to the Muslim Caliph of Córdoba. Both are more than 1000 years old.
From the cathedral’s Chapel of Hope, a door leads out to the Romanesque cloister, which has an unusual trapezoid layout. The cloister gallery, with a double colonnade, has a series of friezes that narrate scenes from the New Testament. Guides tout them as the prize jewel of Catalan Romanesque art, but even more fantastic are the carved capitals of the cloister, which vividly narrate moral tales in intricate twists of stone. From here you can see the Torre de Carlemany (Charlemagne’s Tower), the only surviving section of the 12th century church.
Pop culture note: If those stairs up to the cathedral look familiar, that’s because they appear in a famous scene from the epic TV show Game of Thrones. The cathedral doubled as the Great Sept of Baelor, where massed Tyrell soldiers confronted the Faith Militant.
Several medieval sites, including the Banys Arabs as Braavos and Sant Pere de Galligants monastery as Oldtown, were used in season 6 of the series, and themed walking tours are popular.
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