Salamanca New Cathedral

Overview

The New Cathedral of Salamanca is the late Gothic church begun in 1513 and inaugurated in August 1733, built hard against the flank of the older Romanesque cathedral instead of on top of it. The Catholic Monarchs backed the project at the cathedral chapter’s request, and the chapter stayed its main promoter through the two and a quarter centuries of building that followed.

That is the reason to come: one ticket, two cathedrals. Ten euros covers the New Cathedral, the Old Cathedral, the cloister and the chapter rooms, plus the exhibitions installed in the Palacio Episcopal, with the audioguide included in the price. The roofs and the belfry are the one thing it does not cover; that route, run under the name Ieronimus, sells its own ticket at its own door. The complex is part of the UNESCO World Heritage listing that covers Salamanca’s old town.

The interior is rectangular in plan, three naves wide, with chapels set into the gaps between the buttresses and rib vaults whose tiercerons and liernes draw star patterns overhead. Close to a hundred windows light it, and the ones showing biblical episodes were originally made in Flanders. Over the crossing sits an octagonal cimborrio on pendentives carved with the Marian mysteries, finished by Juan de Sagarbinaga in 1765.

Outside, the west front is the one worth standing back from. Reliefs of the Nativity and the Epiphany sit over the doors under a large ogee arch topped by a Calvary flanked by Saints Peter and Paul, and the sculpture mixes work from the first half of the 16th century with work from the second half of the 17th. The Puerta de Ramos, on the north side, carries an Entry into Jerusalem group with the evangelists ranged either side of the door.

History

Construction of the New Cathedral began in 1513, and Bishop Francisco de Bobadilla blessed the first stone; his tomb is still in the western recess of the north transept. The first campaign ran from the west end towards the crossing, and Juan Gil de Hontañón cut the spiral staircase known as the Mallorca stair between 1513 and 1522 as part of it. By 1560 the finished western half was closed off and consecrated, so Salamanca had a working new church for 173 years before the building was actually done.

The second stage, the crossing and the head, did not get going until the 1580s. Ribero Rada threw out the planned semicircular apse and substituted a rectangular one of Herrerian inspiration, keeping the chapels-between-buttresses scheme and finishing the corners with two towers, and he raised the transept to the height of the main nave, which is where the interior gets its light. The full relay of master builders across the job runs Juan and Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón, Juan de Álava, Juan Setién Güemes, Pantaleón Pontón, the Churriguera brothers and Juan de Sagarbinaga.

A fire in 1705 hit the bell tower, and the vaulted room at its heart had to be propped and reinforced in the 18th century as a result. The building was finished in 1733, and the last big commission inside it was the canons’ choir in the middle of the main nave, built between 1710 and 1733 to designs by Joaquín Benito and Alberto de Churriguera.

Work on the sacristies started in 1752. Three years later the Lisbon earthquake forced emergency repairs elsewhere in the building and the sacristy scheme was never carried through as designed. Manuel de Larra Churriguera began it and Juan de Sagarbinaga finished most of what exists. The cathedral was consecrated again in 1762 once the quake damage had been made good.

The bell tower came closer to being pulled down than most visitors realise. Between 1765 and 1766 Sagarbinaga, Francisco Moradillo, Padre Pontones, Fray Antonio Manzanares and Ventura Rodríguez all filed reports agreeing that it should be demolished, and Rodríguez went on to design a replacement in 1767, two new belfries at the head of the church. The French engineer Baltasar Devreton was called in instead, having already handled the same problem in Córdoba and Granada. His 1767 answer was to bind the Romanesque shaft with six chains at different heights, case the whole of the old shaft in sloping stone, and pin the flanks with iron cramps.

The 19th century was harder on the contents than on the fabric. French occupation reached Salamanca in 1813 and churches were destroyed and part of the cathedral’s treasure lost. Pius IX granted the cathedral the title of minor basilica in 1854, and the complex was declared a national monument in 1887.

Two later dates matter to what you actually walk through. The cathedral museum opened in 1956, and the chapter rooms were given a new museum display in 2014, which is the version on the current ticket.

Visiting

Opening hours are Monday to Saturday 10:00 to 20:00, with last entry at 19:15, and Sunday 10:00 to 18:00, with last entry at 17:15. General admission is €10. Reduced tickets are €9 for over 65s, students, University of Salamanca members, visitors with a disability rated 33 to 64 per cent and parents of large families; €7 for children aged 7 to 16, school groups and groups of more than 20 arriving with an official guide; and €6 for children of large families and the unemployed. Entry is free for children under 7, residents of the Diocese of Salamanca and visitors with a disability rated above 65 per cent. The postal address is Plaza Juan XXIII, and the switchboard is +34 923 21 74 76.

Guiding is compulsory and it is in the ticket price, so there is nothing extra to buy at the door: groups go round with accredited guides, individuals get an audioguide, and the route is single, one-way and permanently lit. Children’s audioguides are free and have their own script, following a girl called Vega and a wise man through the building, in Spanish, English, French and Portuguese.

The audioguide numbering sets the order: tombs at the Puerta de Ramos, then the chapels down the north side, the north arm of the transept, the dome and Capilla Mayor, the choir, the Capilla Dorada, the retrochoir, the sacristies, and finally the cloister, the Capilla de Anaya, the chapter rooms and the Talavera chapel in the Old Cathedral. You cannot double back, so look properly the first time.

The Capilla Mayor is the stop most people rush. It was rebuilt in the second half of the 18th century over the original 1733 arrangement, and the gilded polychrome vault above it works as an architectural canopy over the Churriguera tabernacle. Under a velvet hanging stands an Assumption carved in 1624 by Esteban de Rueda, with silver urns holding the remains of San Juan de Sahagún, patron of Salamanca, and Santo Tomás de Villanueva.

The Capilla Dorada, commissioned by the archdeacon of Alba Francisco Sánchez de Palenzuela around 1515, is the one that sticks. Its walls are covered in statues on brackets under canopies, gilded and painted, with Adam and Eve among patriarchs, apostles, saints, sibyls and prophets, and a figure of Death set into an opening in the wall with a realism the official guide itself calls ferocious. The count runs to roughly 110 statues.

In the north arm of the transept, look for the 16th-century Cristo de la Agonía and, over the door, a large canvas by F. Camilo showing San Carlos Borromeo interceding for the plague victims of Milan. The south arm opens towards the Patio Chico behind a screen designed by Alberto de Churriguera. This is a working church as well as a monument: since 2016 the Capilla de San Clemente has served as the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, with mass at 12:00 every day and confessions from 11:00 to 13:00.

The towers are a separate visit with a separate ticket, bought at the Torre Mocha door on Plaza Juan XXIII. It costs €6 for an individual and €5 a head for groups of 20 or more, and it opens every day: 10:00 to 20:00 from March to December, with last entry at 19:00, and 10:00 to 18:00 in January and February, with last entry at 17:00. Guided night visits cost €10 a head and run to a published calendar.

Allow around an hour and a half for the two cathedrals at audioguide pace, and another hour on top for the towers if you are stopping for photographs. Both entrances are inside the same block of the old town, a short walk from the Plaza Mayor end of the calle Mayor in Salamanca.

Tips

• The €10 cathedral ticket and the €6 tower ticket are sold by different operations at different doors, and neither includes the other. If you want both, budget €16 and buy the tower ticket at the Torre Mocha entrance on Plaza Juan XXIII.

• Do not pay a street guide for the interior. Accredited guiding for groups and audioguides for individuals are both built into the admission price, and the tour route is fixed anyway.

• Students and anyone over 65 pay €9 rather than €10, and University of Salamanca members get the same rate, so carry the card that proves it.

• If you are travelling with children, ask for the children’s audioguide at the desk. It is free, it has a different script from the adult one, and it exists in English as well as Spanish.

• The climb is close to 200 steps and there is no lift, so the tower route is not workable for anyone with limited mobility. The ticket desk has a hearing loop, and there are braille and easy-read leaflets. The published alternative is the virtual tour at salamancatourvirtual.es, with VR headsets available at Monumenta Salmanticae on calle Vera Cruz.

• Night visits of the towers are guided, lit and scored with music, cost €10 and run on a published calendar rather than daily. Private night visits can be booked at a chosen hour in Spanish, English or French.

• Sunday closing is two hours earlier than the rest of the week, at 18:00, and the last ticket goes at 17:15. Turning up at 17:00 on a Sunday buys you a rushed hour, not a visit.

• Midday inside the New Cathedral is not quiet time. Mass is said at 12:00 in the Capilla de San Clemente and confessions run from 11:00 to 13:00, so that corner of the building is in use while you walk past it.