The cathedral of Valladolid is one of the great unfinished buildings of Spain. Begun in 1589 to a design by Juan de Herrera, the architect of El Escorial, it was meant to be a Renaissance temple on the grand scale, with four corner towers and a Latin-cross plan. Funding dried up, the court moved away, and only the eastern end was completed in the original style; the rest was added piecemeal over the following centuries and large sections were never built.
The interior is austere and severe, in the Herreran manner — vast, cool, and stripped of ornament. The altarpiece by Juan de Juni and the Diocesan Museum in the adjacent Santa María la Antigua complex are worth a look. The single completed bell tower offers a fine view over the city; it has been climbable on and off depending on restoration work.