Though really built in stone (see the columns and pillars in the interior), brick has been largely used in the exterior; hence also the impossibility of erecting a pure Gothic building, and this is a remark that can be applied to most churches in Spain. The buttresses are heavy, the square tower (unfinished) is Romanesque or _Mudejar_ in form rather than Gothic, though the windows be ogival. There is no western façade or portal; the tower is situated on the southern side between the true transepts. Of the four doorways, two to the north and two to the south, which give access to the transepts, the largest and richest in sculptural decoration is the Bishop's Door (south). Observe the geometrical designs in the panels of the otherwise ogival and slightly pointed doorway. The other portal on the south is far simpler, and the arch which surmounts it is of a purer Gothic style; not so the geometrically decorated panels and the almost Arabian frieze which runs above the arches. This frieze is Moorish or Mudejar-Byzantine, and though really it does not belong in an ogival building, it harmonizes strangely with it. In the interior of the cathedral the nakedness of the columns is partially recompensed by the richness in sculptural design of some sepulchres, as well as by several sixteenth-century grilles. The huge _retablo_ of the high altar shows Gothic luxuriousness in its details, and at the same time (in the capitals of the flanking columns) nascent plateresque severity. Perhaps the most interesting corner of the interior is the _trascoro_, or the exterior side of the wall which closes the choir on the west. Here the patronizing genius of Bishop Fonseca, a scion of the celebrated Castilian family, excelled itself. The wall itself is richly sculptured, and possesses two fine lateral reliefs. In the centre there is a Flemish canvas of the sixteenth century, of excellent colour, and an elegantly carved pulpit. In the chapter-room are to be seen some well-preserved Flemish tapestries, and in an apsidal chapel is one of Zurbaran's mystic subjects: a praying nun. (This portrait, I believe, has been sold or donated by the chapter, for, if I am not mistaken, it is to be seen to-day in the art collection of the Spanish royal family.) II ZAMORA