The same unimportance, from an art point of view, attaches itself to the cathedral[{190}] church. No one visits the city for the sake of the heavy, clumsy, and exceedingly irregularly built temple which stands on the highest part of the town. On the contrary, the great attraction is the fine beach of the Sardinero which lies to the west of the industrial town, and is, in summer, the Brighton of Spain. The coast-line, deeply dentated and backed by the Cantabric Mountains, is far more delightful and attractive than the Gothic cathedral structure of the thirteenth century.
Consequently, little need be said about it. In the interior, the height of the nave and aisles, rendered more pronounced by the pointed ogival arches, gives the building a somewhat aerial appearance that is belied by the view from without.
CRYPT OF SANTANDER CATHEDRAL
The square tower on the western end is undermined by a gallery or tunnel through which the Calle de Puente passes. To the right of the same, and reached by a flight of steps, stands the entrance to the crypt, which is used to-day as a most unhealthy parish church. This crypt of the late twelfth century or early thirteenth shows a decided Romanesque tendency in its general appearance: it is low, massive, strong, and crowned[{191}] by a semicircular vaulting reposing on gigantic pillars whose capitals are roughly sculptured. The windows which let in the little light that enters are ogival, proving the Transition period to which the crypt belongs; it was originally intended as the pantheon for the abbots of the monastery. But unlike the Galician Romanesque, it lacks an individual cachet; if it resembles anything it is the pantheon of the kings in San Isidoro in Leon, though in point of view of beauty, the two cannot be compared.
The form of the crypt is that of a perfect Romanesque basilica, a nave and two aisles terminating a three-lobed apse.
In the cathedral, properly speaking, there is a baptismal font of marble, bearing an Arabic inscription by way of upper frieze; it is square, and of Moorish workmanship, and doubtless was brought from Cordoba after the reconquest. Its primitive use had been practical, for in Andalusia it stood at the entrance to some mezquita, and in its limpid waters the disciples of Mahomet performed their hygienic and religious ablutions.
VII
VITORIA