Tudela Cathedral (Catedral de Santa María)
Rising from the heart of Tudela's old town, this Romanesque-Gothic cathedral took three centuries to build and rewards every minute you spend inside. The Last Judgement portal alone — a cascade of 116 carved figures — is one of the finest pieces of medieval sculpture in northern Spain.
The Last Judgement Portal
Carved around 1180, the western portal depicts heaven, purgatory and hell in extraordinary detail across three concentric archivolts. Stand close and you can pick out demons dragging sinners by the hair, angels weighing souls, and serene apostles gazing down from the tympanum — a stone comic strip that medieval pilgrims would have 'read' like a sermon.
The portal's polychrome traces have mostly faded, but the sculptural precision has not. Architectural historians rank it alongside the Pórtico de la Gloria in Santiago de Compostela, yet Tudela's version draws a fraction of the crowds.
The Cloister and Interior
Step through into the 12th-century cloister and you enter a hushed garden of double columns with carved capitals illustrating biblical scenes, local legends and even the odd piece of medieval humour. Cats chasing mice, Green Men and jousting knights all hide among the foliage if you look carefully.
Inside the cathedral, 22 chapels line the nave, each packed with gilded altarpieces, alabaster tombs and Flemish paintings collected over five centuries. The Capilla de Nuestra Señora de la Esperanza holds a much-venerated 13th-century statue of the Virgin that the city still processes through the streets every September.
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