Carolyn's Various Travels: Cathedral Primada

We made our way up the hill and many steps to the main Toledo cathedral.

This is the front side facing the plaza.

This is the view of the main alter. The fancy grill work took four years to make.

This is the main alter.

This was my favorite part of the cathedral, and unique to anything else I've seen in many, many European churches that I've visited. The circular light in the top of the picture is basically a sky light in the vaulted ceiling with paintings all around and into the opening and sculpted angels in the mouth of the opening. Literally a light from heaven. It faces south and gets light through the day all year. The light shines down onto an alter that is covered in silver and gold and gleams like it's alive. Beautiful! I tried mightily to capture it in a photo, but failed.

The church is quite large, with 5 aisles. This is looking down the length of the church. The main aisle is actually divided into the main alter area (seen above) and a separate choir area (in the middle of the church), with a little seating at the rear of the main aisle, so you can't actually see the main alter at all from the rear of the church, or even from the side aisles.

This was another unusual piece in the church. I"m used to seeing very darkened paintings with lots of saints in them in darkened side chapels, but this was a huge painting of a giant (St. Christopher) on one of the sanctuary walls. You can see the size of people standing at the bottom of the picture. He is carrying people across the river, and offers to carry the young man across the river. The passenger gets heavier and heavier and the giant realizes he is carrying Christ and the weight of the world on his shoulders. He is painted so large because if he is viewed by someone, it means that they will not die that day, so everyone should be able to see him easily.