Toledo Cathedral: Building Histories in Medieval Castile

It reconciles many separate studies on the cathedral and blends new Spanish art-historical scholarship with close documentary archaeology. Spain, at last, has the cathedral it deserves.”—Paul Crossley, The Courtauld Institute of Art“Few studies of Spanish Gothic architecture address the history and significance of a major cathedral with such mastery as does Tom Nickson’s Toledo Cathedral. Perhaps Nickson’s most valuable contribution is to give us not merely an analysis of stonework but a very lucid pres

Tom Nickson is Lecturer in Medieval Art and Architecture at The Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

In Toledo Cathedral, Tom Nickson provides the first in-depth analysis of the cathedral’s art and architecture.Focusing on the early thirteenth to the late fourteenth centuries, he examines over two hundred years of change and consolidation, tracing the growth of the cathedral in the city as well as the evolution of sacred places within the cathedral itself. Medieval Toledo is famous as a center of Arabic learning and as a home to sizable Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities. Yet its cathedral—one of the largest, richest, and best preserved in all of