#cathedral square

Piazza del Duomo.

This Friday in Italy

Plaza de la Catedral, Oviedo (No. 3)

The construction of the current [Oviedo Cathedral’s] façade began in the early sixteenth century under the design of Juan de Badajoz. Despite the time of construction, the Gothic style is still used instead of the Renaissance.

A low portico is built with three arches and three doors that give access to each of the naves. It is covered with an almost flat ribbed vault. The central façade, the most important both aesthetically and in size, is crowned with a relief of the Transfiguration and next to it some bas-relief figures representing Fruela I and Alfonso II the Chaste. A little further down some medallions representing the baby Jesus and Saint John child.

The doors made in the eighteenth century in walnut. The door of the central nave contains in the center of each of its leaves an image of San Salvador and Santa Eulalia de Mérida, both patrons of the cathedral and the Principality of Asturias. The temple is accessed through the door on the left.

With a height of 80 m it is divided into five bodies that decrease in size as you ascend. The tower begins integrated into the portico on the four pillars that form the arcade. It is topped with a temple formed by cylindrical towers that end in the arrow of the pinnacle.

In the tower we can find a clock on the second floor, on the top floor the shield of the bishop of Oviedo Cristóbal Rojas Sandoval who held the position at the end of the tower and in each section a window with mainel that hold braided stone otivals.

Famous tower in nineteenth-century Spanish literature because it is one of the inert protagonists of Leopoldo Alas' novel "Clarín" La Regenta. From his height and with the help of a spyglass, Don Fermín de Pas, the Magistral, watched over the city.