The cathedral church of Ciudad Rodrigo is a twelfth-century building, in which the Romanesque style, similar to those of Zamora and Toro, fights with the nascent ogival style. Notwithstanding these remarks, however, the building does not pertain to the Transition period, but rather to the second or last period of Spanish Romanesque. This is easily seen by the basilica form of the church, the three-lobed apse, the lack of an ambulatory walk, and the apparently similar height of nave and aisles. The square tower, surmounted by a cupola, at the foot of the church, as well as the entire western front, dates from the eighteenth century; it is cold, anti-artistic, utterly unable to appeal to the poetic instincts of the spectator. Behind the western front, and leading directly into the body of the church, is a delightful Romanesque narthex which doubtlessly served as the western façade prior to the eighteenth-century additions. It is separated from the principal nave by a door divided into two by a solid pediment, upon which is encrusted a statue of the Virgin with Child in her arms. The semicircular arches which surmount the door are finely executed, and the columns which support them are decorated with handsome twelfth-century statuettes. There is a great similarity between this portal and the principal one (del Obispo) in Toro: it almost seems as though the same hand had chiselled both, or at least traced the plan of their decoration. Of the two doors which lead, one on the south and the other on the north, into the transept, the former is perhaps the more perfect specimen of the primitive style. Both are richly decorated; unluckily, in both portals, the rounded arches have been crowned in more recent times by an ogival arch, which certainly mars the pureness of the style, though not the harmony of the ensemble. To the left of these doors, a niche has been carved into the wall to contain a full-length statue of the Virgin; this is an unusual arrangement in Spanish churches. The exterior of the apse retains its primitive _cachet_; the central chapel, where the high altar is placed, was, however, rebuilt in the sixteenth century by Tavera, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Toledo, who had at one time occupied the see of Ciudad Rodrigo. It is a peculiar mixture of Gothic and Romanesque, of pointed windows and heavy buttresses; the flat roof is decorated by means of a low stone railing or balustrade composed of elegantly carved pinnacles.