El Catedral de Valencia

The Baroque main entrance. This style borrows a lot from classic Greek and Roman architecture, but with much more ornate decoration.

Saturday (sorry for not posting this sooner…), I visited Valencia’s Cathedral, a building that I’ve mentioned in a few other posts (where I stole the above pictures from). This cathedral was built and renovated over many different centuries and is an interesting blend of architectural styles. After having walked by and around the exterior of el Catedral many times, we actually went inside the gorgeous building today and did an audio tour! I love old architecture, and aside from castles and palaces, old churches tend to be the most impressive of old buildings (as was intended). This church did not disappoint.

Here are a bunch of photos I took of the inside.

Gothic architecture at its finest. They just don’t make buildings like this anymore 😉

A lovely stained-glass rose window (also Gothic in style).

The alter and the area behind/above it are quite obviously not Gothic. This is one of the later renovations in the baroque style. It’s pretty, but sometimes it’s a bit much.

That is an octagonal tower of windows on top of a square base, part of the original construction of the church in the 14th century. If that feat of architecture doesn’t impress you, I don’t think we can be friends. Seriously, this thing is made of stone and it’s been there for more than 600 years. It’s pretty amazing to stand under.

Have you ever noticed the large amount of dead people in churches, particularly old cathedrals? Tombs in the floor, the walls, sometimes even underground crypts. The Cathedral in Valencia was no different. The picture on the top right below shows one tomb in a wall of one of the many chapels of the church. There were lots more just like it.

This gold… statue? display? thing? I don’t remember what this was, but it was shiny and impressive. A baptismal font, maybe? I don’t think so…

Many of the chapels lining the back portion of the church have tombs like these in the walls. The amount of dead holy people in churches always freaks me out a little bit, I have to be honest.

The Cathedral has a large side chapel that is very Gothic in style. It also houses the supposed Holy Grail. They say the cup dates back to the 1st century, though the base is newer and was probably added later. Regardless of weather or not that is actually the Holy Grail, it’s kind of amazing that a cup that old is just hanging out in this chapel.

The Chapel of the Holy Chalice (see the next set of pictures).

The Cathedral also houses a relic of Saint Vincent, the patron saint of Valencia. The lefthand picture below shows the saint’s preserved arm. Creepy, right?

This is probably the creepiest thing I have ever seen in a church. It’s the arm of Saint Vincent, one of the patron saints of Valencia.

This glowing gold thing that is a little hard to see (sorry) is believed to be THE cup, the one used at the Last Supper. Even if it’s not the Holy Grail, it’s still a cup that dates back to the 1st century C.E., with a stem/holder that’s several centuries newer. That is a very old cup and religiously important cup, people.

So that about sums up the coolest parts of the inside. But we also climbed the bell tower attached to the cathedral, the Miguelete (not the worst thing I’ve hiked up recently, but it was a good amount of stairs. Definitely worth the climb and the 2 euros).

The bell, “Little Michael” (a.k.a. Miguelete). This thing rang when we were up there and scared the **** out of us and everyone else when it did so 🙂

Me (left) and a friend posing under the bell. Luckily, this was a few minutes before it rang.

While we were up at the top of the tower, it turned five o’clock. A few other churches in the area rang their bells first, and we thought, “hey, that’s pretty quiet,” thinking it was the bell in the tower that was ringing. Wrong. A couple seconds later, the bell we were standing right next to started to wring and it was SO LOUD I plugged my ears. It also scared the crap out of us and everyone else that was up there, which was pretty funny.

The view of the cross-shaped cathedral from atop its tower.

My friends taking in the views.

It’s hard to tell from this picture, but I think I live in that general direction.

Other than a history-filled walking tour, this is probably my favorite of all the things I’ve seen in Valencia so far. (The castle in Xativa is up there on that list, too, but technically it’s not in Valencia).

 

Hasta luego!