[Illustration: SANTIAGO AND ITS CATHEDRAL]

The best portal is the Puerta de la Plateria, opening into the southern
arm of the transept. It is, unluckily, depressed and thrown into the
background by the cloister walls on the left, and by the Trinity Tower
on the right. Nevertheless, both handsome and sober, it can be counted
among the finest examples of its kind--pure Romanesque--in Spain, and is
rendered even more attractive by the peculiar Galician poetry which
inspired its sculptors.

Immediately above the panels of the door, which are covered with
twelfth-century metal reliefs, there is a stone plaque or low relief,
representing the Passion scene; to the left of it is to be seen a
kneeling woman holding a skull in her hand. Evidently it is a weeping,
penitent Magdalene. The popular tongue has invented a legend--perhaps a
true one--concerning this woman, who is believed to symbolize the
adulteress. It appears that a certain hidalgo, discovering his wife's
sins, killed her lover by cutting off his head; he then obliged her to
kiss and adore the skull twice daily throughout her life,--a rather
cruel punishment and a slow torture, quite in accordance with the
mystic spirit of the Celts.

The apse of the church, circular in the interior, is squared off on the
outside by the addition of chapels. As regards the plateresque northern
and western facades, they are out of place, though the former might have
passed off elsewhere as a fairly good example of the severe
sixteenth-century style.

The general plan of the building is Roman cruciform; the principal nave
is high, and contains both choir and high altar; the two aisles are much
lower and darker, and terminate behind the high altar in an ambulatory
walk. The width of the transept is enormous, and is composed of a nave
and two aisles similar in size to those of the body of the church. The
_croisee_ is surmounted by a dome, which, though not Romanesque, is
certainly an advantageous addition.

Excepting the high altar with its _retablo_, the choir with its none too
beautiful stalls, and the various chapels of little interest and less
taste, the general view of the interior is impressively beautiful. The
height of the central nave, rendered more elegant by the addition of a
handsome Romanesque triforium of round-headed arches, contrasts
harmoniously with the sombre aisles, whereas the bareness of the
walls--for all mural paintings were washed away by a bigoted prelate