Teruel Cathedral

Teruel Cathedral is a fascinating accumulation of architectural styles built up over centuries. The original Mudéjar tower, with its geometric brick patterning and ceramic tile inlays, dates to the 13th century and is the oldest of the city's four UNESCO-listed towers. The rest of the building was extended and altered through the Gothic period and beyond, but it is the interior that shocks.

The cathedral's painted Mudéjar ceiling is extraordinary — a vast wooden ceiling decorated in the 13th century with secular and religious scenes in vivid detail. It was whitewashed at some point and forgotten, rediscovered only in 1929. Entry to the cathedral includes access to a museum of religious art and the tower. Allow 45 minutes minimum.

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A story
The cathedral's Mudéjar painted ceiling, completed in the 13th century and hidden for centuries under a plaster vault, was rediscovered in the 1930s. Its 1,500 square metres of painted panels show everyday scenes — acrobats, chess players, hunting scenes, and courtly life — alongside religious imagery, making it one of the richest visual documents of medieval Aragonese life anywhere in Spain.