Cathedral of Santa María del Prado

The Cathedral of Santa María del Prado is the largest religious building in the city, a sturdy Gothic structure with the unusual single-nave plan typical of churches built by the military orders of medieval Spain. The exterior is austere; the interior is far more rewarding, with a soaring sense of space and a richly carved 17th-century altarpiece by Giraldo de Merlo.

Open in the morning and the late afternoon. Slip in to escape the midday heat and to see one of the more genuinely impressive interiors in central Spain.

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A story
Construction began at the end of the 13th century but the nave is unusually wide — at 15 metres, the second widest single-nave Gothic church in Spain after Girona. The cathedral was not raised to that rank until 1980, when the diocese of Ciudad Real was carved out of Toledo.

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