Burgos

Here lies buried Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar (El Cid Campeador) and his wife Doña Jimena. But that's a different history.

We have entered the meseta of Castilla-Leon. With the fall of the Roman Empire this area lay abandoned. One couldn't depended on being able to harvest a crop if it were planted. At the beginning of the reconquest population from the mountains settled this area to raise cereals and a bit later shepherds brought sheep to be sheared from the south. Burgos lies at the foot of a pass in the coastal range to the north with connection to Santander; among the earliest settlements of the meseta. The city was founded in something like 800 a.d. - give or take - the era of Charlemagne. Since then it has been a significant marketplace and religious center.



The cathedral here is so famous that even I have heard about it. The one in Sevilla is bigger. When they started that one they wrote that they would build one so big that men for all time would think they were crazy. That's an attitude I admire. This is big too. Much doesn't fit in the camera frame. It is often said to be the nicest in Spain.






No argument from me. Lots of steeples to admire. We usually have to settle for just one.













The choir.



Carved and inlaid (marquetry).




Burgos is a big place, but we're finding this all along the camino. You might see these as museums, but they are not. People use them today in the same way they always have. Though they reflect a time in which people were unafraid to appear religious. Today they seem extravagant, but they are not. They are no more extravagant than pouring out a bottle of ointment on the feet. Somebody will have to help me find that passage.