[Illustration: BURGOS CATHEDRAL] The central door is surmounted by a plateresque-Renaissance pediment imbedded in an ogival arch (of all things!); the side doors are crowned by a simple window. Vastly superior in all respects to the lower body are the upper stories, of which the first is begun by a pinnacled balustrade running from tower to tower; in the centre, between the two towers, there is an immense rosace of a magnificent design and embellished by means of an ogival arch in delicate relief; the windows of the tower, as well as in the superior bodies, are pure ogival. The next story can be considered as the basement of the towers, properly speaking. The central part begins with a prominent balustrade of statues thrown against a background formed by twin ogival windows of exceptional size. The third story is composed, as regards the towers, of the last of the square bodies upon which the flèche reposes; these square bases are united by a light frieze or perforated balustrade which crowns the central part of the façade and is decorated with ogival designs. Last to be mentioned, but not least in importance, are the _flèches_. Though short in comparison to the bold structure at Oviedo, they are, nevertheless, of surprising dignity and elegance, and richly ornamented, being covered over with an innumerable amount of tiny pinnacles encrusted, as it were, on the stone network of a perforated pyramid. The northern façade is richer in sculptural details than the western, though the portal possesses but one row of statues. The rosace is substituted by a three-lobed window, the central pane of which is larger than the lateral two. As this northern façade is almost fifteen feet higher than the ground-plan of the temple,--on account of the street being much higher,--a flight of steps leads down into the transept. As a Renaissance work, this golden staircase is one of Spain's marvels, but it looks rather out of place in an essentially Gothic cathedral. To avoid the danger of falling down these stairs and with a view to their preservation, the transept was pierced by another door in the sixteenth century, on a level with the floor of the building, and leading into a street lower than the previous one; it is situated on the east of the prolonged transept, or better still, of the prolonged northern transept arm.