ates
the church. Thus from afar it seems as though the castle tower were part
of the religious edifice, and the general appearance of the whole city
surrounded by massive walls cannot be more warlike. The colour also of
the ruddy sandstone and brick, brilliant beneath a bright blue sky, is
characteristic of this part of Castile, and certainly constitutes one of
its charms. What is more, the landscape is rendered more exotic or
African by the Oriental appearance of the whole town, its castle, and
its cathedral.

The latter was begun and ended in the twelfth century; the first stone
was laid in 1151, and the vaults were closed twenty-three years later,
in 1174; consequently it is one of the unique twelfth-century churches
in Spain completed before the year 1200. It is true that the original
edifice has been deformed by posterior additions and changes dating from
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Excepting these abominable additions, the primitive building is
Romanesque; not Romanesque as are the cathedrals we have seen in
Galicia, but Byzantine, or military Romanesque, showing decided
Oriental influences. Would to Heaven the cathedral of Zamora were to-day
as it stood in the twelfth century!

[Illustration: ZAMORA CATHEDRAL]

The form of the church is that of a basilica. Like the cathedral of
Palencia, it lacks a western front; the apse is semicircular,
strengthened by heavy leaning buttresses; the upper, towerless rim of
this same body is decorated with an ogival festoon set off by means of
the primitive pinnacles of the top of the buttresses. The northern
(Renaissance or plateresque) front is, though beautiful and severe in
itself, a calamity when compared with the Romanesque edifice, as is also
the new and horrid clock-tower.

The view of the southern end of the transept, as seen from the left, is
the most imposing to be obtained of the building. Two flights of steps
lead up to the Romanesque portal, flanked by three simple pillars, which
support three rounded arches deeply dentated(!). Blind windows, similar
in structure to the portal, occupy the second body of the facade, and
are surmounted in their turn by a simple row of inverted crenelated
teeth, showing in their rounded edges the timid use of the horseshoe
arc. The superior body is formed by two concentric and slightly ogival
arches embedded in the wall.

The greatest attraction, and that which above all gives a warlike aspect
to the whole building,