The thickness of the walls (ten feet!), the admirable simpleness of the vaulting, and the general aspect from the exterior, have won[{265}] for the church the name of fortis Salamantini.
The New Cathedral.—It was begun in 1513, the old temple having been judged too small, and above all too narrow for a city of the importance of Salamanca.
Over two hundred years did the building of the present edifice last; at times all work was stopped for years, no funds being at hand to pay either artists or masons.
The primitive plan of the church, as proposed by the congress of architects, was Gothic of the second period, with an octagonal apse; the lower part of the church, from the foot to the transept, was the first to be constructed.
The upper part of the apse was not begun until the year 1588, and the artist, imbued with the beauty of Herrero's Escorial, squared the apse with the evident intention of constructing turrets on the exterior angles, which would have rendered the building symmetrical: two towers on the western front, a cupola on the croisée, and two smaller turrets on the eastern end.
The building as it stands to-day is a perfect rectangle cut in its length by a nave (containing[{266}] the choir and the high altar), and by two aisles, lower than the nave and continued in an ambulatory walk behind the high altar.
The same symmetry is visible in the lateral chapels: eight square huecos on the exterior walls of the aisles, five to the west, and three to the east of the transept, and three in the extreme eastern wall of the apse.
Magnificence rather than beauty is the characteristic note of the new cathedral. The primitive part—pure ogival with but little mixture—contrasts with the eastern end, which is covered over with the most glaring grotesque decoration; most of the chapels are spoiled by the same shocking profusion of super-ornamentation; the otherwise majestic cupola, the high altar, and the choir—all suffer from the same defect.
The double triforium—one higher than the other—in the clerestory produces a most favourable impression; this is heightened by the wealth of light, which, entering by two rows of windows and by the cimborio, falls upon the rich decoration of friezes and capitals. The general view of the whole building is also freer than in most Spanish[{267}] cathedrals, and this harmony existing in the proportions of the different parts strikes the visitor more favourably, perhaps, than in the severer cathedral at Burgos.
