Catedral de Sevilla

This guide to the Cathedral of Seville starts in the chapter house on July 8, 1401, when the city's clergy signed a vow to build a church so vast that anyone who saw it finished would think them mad. It follows how ordinary priests funded the first stones out of their own stipends, long before Seville held any fortune, and how the city's later monopoly on trade with the Americas changed what the building became. Above you, an altarpiece gilded with scripture scenes still marks the distance between that first vow and what the church became.