The story
Toledo's cathedral is one of the great High Gothic churches of Spain, begun in 1226 and built over more than two centuries on the site of a mosque, itself raised over a Visigothic church. For most of the Middle Ages this was the seat of the primate of all Spain, and its wealth shows in the scale of the stone and the forest of pillars inside.
It doubles as an extraordinary picture gallery. The sacristy is hung like a museum, its ceiling frescoed, its walls holding El Greco's 'The Disrobing of Christ', painted for this cathedral around 1579, alongside Goya, Titian and Van Dyck. In the ambulatory behind the high altar is the Transparente, a Baroque burst of marble and gilded figures by Narciso Tome, lit through a hole cut in the Gothic vault so that daylight falls on it from above.
You visit it as a working cathedral, buying a ticket that takes you past the carved choir stalls and the treasury before you reach the El Greco, still in the building it was made for.
