León: the cathedral, Gaudí's Casa Botines and San Isidoro: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
Cathedral light, Casa Botines (Gaudí), San Isidoro
León was the capital of a kingdom, and its old centre keeps the traces: the oldest known church in the city, the Plaza Mayor where the market was held, and the palaces of noble families, with Gaudí's Casa Botines set down among them in 1891 and 1892 to suit the cathedral and the Guzmanes palace.
The stops
The present Gothic cathedral was begun around 1205, stalled over foundation problems, was taken up again in 1255, and by 1302 the whole church was open to worshippers. Modelled on the layout of Reims Cathedral, it reduces its walls to a minimum to make room for nearly 1,800 square metres of stained glass, most of it from the 13th to the 15th century. Roman baths lay on this site and later became a royal palace, which King Ordoño II gave up for the first cathedral, and his tomb is inside.
Photo: Rafa Esteve — CC BY-SA 4.0 The museum shows how an enlightened family of the 19th century lived in this house on the cathedral square, which Segundo Sierra-Pambley built in 1848 and which still keeps the furnishings it was fitted out with, from wallpapers and carpets, then a novelty, to furniture, fabrics, crockery and cutlery. A second part shows the teaching work of the Sierra-Pambley Foundation, whose schools used the intuitive, experimental method promoted by the Institución Libre de Enseñanza instead of learning by heart.
Photo: Zarateman — CC0 This is considered the oldest known Christian church in León. King Ramiro II began a monastery here in 931, beside his palace, for his daughter Elvira, who entered it as abbess, and in a cemetery beside it lay the kings Ramiro II, Ordoño III, Sancho I and Ordoño IV until, after Almanzor's raid of 988, their burials were moved to the Royal Pantheon. When the church was condemned in 1910, an architect's survey found the plan of the original Mozarabic church, a Greek cross, and it is marked in the floor today.
Photo: Nacho Traseira — CC BY-SA 4.0 This two-spout fountain on Calle Plegarias is old: a document of 1530 records the cathedral chapter and the city council agreeing to bring water to it from the first spouts on the cathedral square. A plaque says it was restored and decorated in 1801, to a design by the León architect Fernando Sánchez Pertejo. The square around it, the Plaza de San Martín, was a busy shopping district outside the Roman wall and was once known as the plaza de las tiendas, the shops' square.
Photo: David Perez — CC BY-SA 4.0 A great fire in February 1654 destroyed this part of the city, and the square built to replace it was finished in 1677; it is described as the sixth oldest Plaza Mayor in Spain. The Baroque Mirador on its west side looks like a town hall but is only 32 metres long and 5.3 metres deep, and has served as a presidential balcony for celebrations and sermons, one of which the poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer attended on a Good Friday. The square was the city's great market from the Middle Ages and still sits in the Barrio Húmedo.
Photo: Fernando — CC BY-SA 4.0 The oldest part of this church is Romanesque and dates from the 11th century. It is also known as Santa María del Camino de los Franceses, because it stands on the French Way of the Camino de Santiago, and its apse faces the Plaza del Grano. Later centuries added Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque elements, and in 1973 it was declared a national historic-artistic monument.
Photo: Rafa Esteve — CC BY-SA 4.0 Officially the Plaza de Santa María del Camino, after the church whose apse faces it, this square is known as the Plaza del Grano from the markets where grain and other farm produce were sold here, and it keeps the cobbles typical of medieval León. A fountain of two children stands at its centre, standing for the meeting of the rivers Bernesga and Torío in the city, beside a stone cross that was once the city's pillory and where, by tradition, the Virgin appeared on a 9 February. Julio Llamazares names the square in his 1981 book El entierro de Genarín, because one of the stages of the burial of Genarín takes place here each year.
Photo: José Luiz — CC BY-SA 3.0 Pedro Suárez de Quiñones and his wife Juana González de Bazán built this palace in the 14th century, and it fills much of the south-western corner of León's city wall of the late third century. The façade still shows the original central block with three coats of arms, the Quiñones in the middle and the Bazán on either side, and beside it a three-storey Renaissance tower that Catalina Pimentel added. The Inquisition's tribunal sat in the palace for many years, and it now holds temporary exhibitions.
Photo: Nacho Traseira — CC BY-SA 4.0 Ramiro Núñez de Guzmán, a former Comunero leader, commissioned this Renaissance palace from the master Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón, and building began in 1559. It was left unfinished, with only two of its four wings and the courtyard raised, yet it became the city's most prominent palace and in 1602 hosted Philip III and Margaret of Austria. In 1881 the provincial government bought it and took on finishing it for its offices, a job completed in the 1960s and 1970s, and it is still the seat of the Diputación.
Photo: Nacho Traseira — CC BY-SA 4.0 Antoni Gaudí built this neo-Gothic house in 1891 and 1892 for the owners of a fabric company, after his patron Eusebi Güell recommended him. He gave it corner towers, a moat around two of its façades to light and air the basement, and above the main door a stone St George slaying a dragon. Gaudí designed the façade to suit its neighbours, the cathedral and the Guzmanes palace, and a sculpture of Gaudí seated on a bench stands in front of it.
Photo: Laci3 — CC0 León's oldest museum, opened in 1869 in the Convent of San Marcos, has been in the Pallarés building on this square since 2007. It follows the history of the province through archaeology, art and ethnography, and among its medieval pieces it holds notable Mozarabic remains from Palat del Rey. A separate space offers a panorama of the city that includes one of the most complete viewpoints on its historic skyline.
Photo: Rafa Esteve — CC BY-SA 4.0 San Marcelo is the patron saint of León, and this parish church is said to go back to 850, when King Ramiro I founded it over a chapel on the spot where, by legend, the centurion Marcelo declared his faith. His relics were brought from Tangier in 1493 and received by King Ferdinand the Catholic, and the church was remodelled between 1588 and 1628. It is known for its sober Palladian look. At the end of the 12th century it was also a pilgrims' hospital, the first known in León.
Photo: Zarateman — CC0 In 1063 King Ferdinand I and Queen Sancha rededicated this church to Isidore of Seville, whose relics had been brought to León, and Sancha chose it as the royal burial chapel. Most of the kings and queens of the Kingdom of León were buried in its Royal Pantheon, among them Ramiro II, Ordoño III, Sancho I and Ordoño IV, under 12th-century wall paintings that show New Testament scenes beside scenes of country life. In 1188 King Alfonso IX summoned the Cortes of León to the basilica, which UNESCO holds to be the first historically documented example of a parliamentary system.
Photo: Jesusccastillo — CC BY-SA 4.0
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