stories from zaragoza: la seo and el pilar, the frenemies

 this is a city with two cathedrals!whoever knows my passion for weird comparisons and GRE analogies will understand that this chance was too much of a good thing for me. OF COURSE i must choose a favourite, i thought even before seeing them. of course i must see which one is older, which is bigger, what their respective claims to fame are. so i remember the first evening, walking by the ebro after a whole day flying and aeroporting and busing, and being very very hungry, and still wondering: a big church!!! so is this the one, or the other? la seo is right by a bridge, so is this la seo? because then the other one must be more to the...west. man, this is pretty big! look at that mosaic thing on the...

so this is el pilar the first time we saw it, before we knew it was el pilar

La Basilica de Nuestra Senora del Pilar stands on the site of a presumed apparition of virgin mary, where there's been a chapel or a church of some sort ever since a few years after christ's crucifixion. (more later on the cult of the virgin around here!) it was first consecrated as a church in the 1st or 2nd century AD. it was done in romanesque in 13th century, then in mudejar gothic in 15th century, then in barroque in 17th. the present time building is the barroque one, but with as many add-ons as they could put together. and i mean that.
it's huge. saying this is the biggest church i've seen in my life does it no justice. it took like...half an hour to just take a tour inside of it. which made me say you can fit my grandma's entire village in it, which seems a more apt image. or, like....the downtown of cluj? maybe? i mean this church occupies half of one length of the city's largest square.
its main altar is almost another whole story, though by the end of this post it might sound familiar: patching upon addition upon patching of renaissance, gothic, barroque. like they brought altars from different other churches and overlapped them with what was already there...with the exclusive purpose of having it be "as big and even bigger" than the altar of la seo.
bam!

i like competitivity where i see it.

giulia and i entered el pilar one afternoon at the end of 2012. during the evening service. the pews in front of the main altar were full of people, and there was singing and preaching going on. we took a walk inside, but mostly shaking our heads at the sheer dimension of the place. then giulia is like, there's no way i'm leaving til i take a closer look at the altar. so the only thing to do was wait for the service to end.
the schedule on the door said there was a new service starting every hour, so we're thinking ok, at the end, at about quarter to...these people must be leaving. oh well, NO! the people speaking and mumbling and half-singing there never ever stopped. but some people did leave, but not all. and you just knew that new ones were going to come and take up all the space. in the end we went, with maximum rudeness, and placed ourselves in front of the front benches and took about 10 minutes to stare at the altar in all its grotesque glory.
(it is bigger than the one in La Seo.)

Catedral del Salvador - seen from the little street market place at the back

again, when we first saw La Seo from the back, it was night and we had no idea what it was. that's because the Mudejar part (mudejar = moorish influenced gothic, once and for all!) looks so set apart from the newer facade, and also pretty non-church like.

on the good side of La Seo

la seo stands on the site of the former roman forum in zaragoza. it was built first as a mosque, during the moorish domination, sometime in the 8th century AD, then when the christians came (12th century) it was consecrated as christian church and that's when it got the name of san salvador. in time, it kept being modified more and more into a romanesque style church, then gothic with mudejar influences.
the parts of it we most admired were apparently done in the 14th century: the side walls with those intricate decorations, with ceramic additions and all.
in the meantime, so many things happened, modification and renovation-wise!!! a mudejar tower fell, which is why the old part looks weird and incomplete, and a brand new (pretty ugly) front was built in a neo classical mode that seems to have no connection whatsoever with the rest of the building. which is only fair. it's the same on the inside, where the merging of styles is something absolutely breathtaking and headache-inducing. (even for me, imagine giulia, who is an art history/architecture fanatic)

carmen: "we're not allowed to take pictures inside, right? yesss! relief!"

but, so, in case there was any doubt: we like La Seo better!!! let me count the ways:
- mudejar!!! way better than barroque
- i think i like to see la seo as a bit of an underdog?? considering how much effort went into specifically embiggening el pilar just to... make it bigger? or like, la seo is the old elite and el pilar is the nouveau riche - something like that!
- inside la seo they had a tapestry collection (bonus!)
- and, they had better explanation for everything that was inside! including notes about the altar, what the different scenes on it represented etc. also for the numerous capels all along the sides. (all the notes were in spanish though!!! everywhere!!)
all in all, it is as if el pilar functions more like an actual church, and la seo like a museum. does this make it clearer?

poor little Seo! look how small it is

and now for reconciliation: we took sides very categorically, but of course we do like pilar too. even if i refused to take lots of pictures of her (i mean, why? it's on all the postcards and fridge magnets.) -  this is the goodbye on our last day:

the nativity scene in front of el pilar....also probably lifesize. we didn't go in, but there were dangerously long lines

from the top of the zuda tower, you can see both pilar (closer) and la seo (the distant tower).

just take a moment to think of all the work and various types of feelings that went into this.

c.