Girona cathedral

Forming a dramatic centrepiece of the old city, the cathedral is a mighty Gothic structure built on the hillside and approached by a magnificent flight of seventeenth-century Baroque steps. Local legend has it that if a single person sits in Charlemagne's Chair, at the back of the nave, they will remain single; if a couple sit their they will get married. This area has been a place of worship since Roman times, and a Moorish mosque stood on the site before the foundation of the cathedral in 1038. Much of the present building dates from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but a few earlier parts can still be seen – including the eleventh-century north tower and the Romanesque cloisters with their exquisite sculpted capitals.

The main facade, remodelled in the eighteenth century, bursts with exuberant decoration: faces, bodies, coats of arms, and with saints Peter and Paul flanking the door. Inside, the cathedral is awesome – there are no aisles, just one tremendous single-naved Gothic vault with a span of 22m, the largest Gothic nave in the world. This emphasis on width and height is a feature of Catalan-Gothic with its "hall churches", of which, unsurprisingly, Girona's is the ultimate example. Contemporary sceptics declared the vault to be unsafe, and building only went ahead after an appeal by its designer, Guillermo Bofill, to a panel of architects.

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