The naves of this cathedral are, as Ford noticed more than fifty years ago, narrow in proportion to their height and length--the height of the central nave being a little more than seventy feet. “The light and elegant piers contrast with the enormous thickness of the outer walls.” For my own part, I know of no cathedral whose interior proportions are so simple in their perfection and so restful to the eye. Street describes them in these words: “Engaged columns run up from the floor to the vault, and carry transverse ribs or arches below the great waggon-vault. The triforium opens to the nave with a round arch subdivided with two arches carried on a detached shaft.” The gloom-filled side naves are still lined with confessional boxes dedicated to various saints, where pilgrims of every nationality can find a priest who understands something of their language. This cathedral once had seven gates,[136] most of them open day and night to pilgrims. Aimerico gives all their names: the Porta-Santa is the only one remaining. There are three façades which merit our careful attention. Let us leave for awhile the beauties of the interior and devote ourselves now to those of the exterior. The edifice is built on ground by no means level, hence the necessity for the handsome flight of steps that lead to the _Puerta de las Platerias_ which constitutes the southern façade of the cathedral, and is thus named because it faces the Street of the Silversmiths. This façade is of extreme interest for many reasons. To begin with, it is the oldest part of the cathedral, and the only one of the original façades that has been preserved, the only one left to give us a true idea of what the exterior must have been like in the days of its pristine beauty. This façade is decorated with no less than a hundred sculptured figures, most of them of white marble. The sculpture of the façade itself is remarkable. In most countries where granite abounds sculpture is coarse and rude, but here the reverse is the case, in spite of the fact that it is the work of the eleventh century. All the statues are semi-relief, the white marble being encrusted as it were upon the granite walls. Although these statues exhibit some of the defects of their age,--rigidity of limb, unnatural posture, and other faults,[137]--yet they are indisputably an example of the best sculpture of the last quarter of the eleventh century. Upon the tunics of some of the statues Ferreiro has noted a suspicion of the corded fringe seen upon statues of the ancient Romans.