Cathedral of Santa María and San Julián, Cuenca

The cathedral of Santa María and San Julián, on the Plaza Mayor of Cuenca, is the mother church of the diocese and one of the most recognisable landmarks of the World Heritage city. It was built between 1196 and 1257 and is one of the earliest Gothic cathedrals in Spain, with a very direct influence from the 12th-century Anglo-Norman and Franco-Norman Gothic.

The building combines Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Neo-Gothic elements, following successive reforms. It has a three-nave plan with transept and five original stepped apses, a double ambulatory rebuilt in the 15th century, 120 metres in length and 36 metres of interior height, with sexpartite ribbed vaults. The 16th-century Renaissance cloister was designed by Juan de Herrera; the 18th-century Baroque Transparente is a work by Ventura Rodríguez.

The present façade is a 20th-century Neo-Gothic reconstruction by Vicente Lampérez, following the collapse of the bell tower in 1902. Among its singularities are the sculpted New World animals —armadillos, pufferfish, turtles— discovered after 1492 and integrated into the Gothic arcading, an almost unique case in Iberian Romanesque-Gothic. It is a Cultural Heritage site (BIC).