The church is in the Romanesque style, the oldest portion being the chapel of Santa Catalina, which Street thinks was the original fabric of Fernando I. The chapel was intended as a mausoleum for the royal family of Leon, but twelve tombs only remain out of thirty. The only inscriptions are on the resting-places of Alfonso V. and Sancha, the sister of Alfonso VII. Here were buried Alfonso IV., Ramiro II., Ordoño III. and his queen, Sancho I., Ramiro III. and his queen Urraca, Fernando I. and Queen Sancha, Sancho the Great of Navarre, and the murdered Count Garcia. Here, before the Pantheon was despoiled by the French in 1808, might have been seen the marble and porphyry sepulchre of the brave princess Urraca of Zamora, and the urns of the Moorish and French wives of Alfonso VII. Now, the inscriptions having been wantonly defaced, it is impossible to identify the few remaining sarcophagi. The arches of this gloomy Pantheon are decorated with curious frescoes, probably of the twelfth century. The crude drawing and tints rather add to the impressive effect of these solemn paintings. Among the subjects are the ‘Massacre of the Innocents,’ the ‘Last Supper’ (painted, as Street points out, without the least regard to the angles formed by the groining, and as if the vault were a flat surface), scenes from the Passion, and the Visions of the Apocalypse--terrible conceptions. One of the designs represents the Supreme Judge with two swords issuing from His mouth; another shows a hand, inscribed _Dextra Dei_. The compositions are surrounded by foliage, rich and conventional. On the altar is an interesting ivory cross, the gift of Fernando I. and Sancha, whose names are engraved upon the reverse. While the figure of Christ is rude in the extreme, the foliage and figures of the four evangelists at the back are exquisitely chiselled. Leaving this place consecrated to wrath and tears, we re-enter the church. The plan is roughly cruciform, an apsidal chapel projecting to the east of each arm of the transept, on either side of the Capilla Mayor. We are now in that part of the fabric which was built by order of Alfonso VII., evidently on the model of St. Sernin at Toulouse. The name of the architect is given on an inscription in the flooring as Petrus de Deo--Peter of God. The most interesting features in the church are the very ancient mural paintings in the Byzantine style, with the same profusion of foliage and richly moulded capitals to be noticed in the Pantheon. The dentated and horse-shoe arches reveal traces of Moorish influence, showing that even in the far north of Spain architects could not have closed their eyes and ears altogether to the doings of the detested infidels.