The Old Cathedral
Austere Romanesque with a 53-panel altarpiece.
Julián Rejas De Castro — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Emilio J. Rodríguez Posada — CC BY-SA 4.0 · El Pantera — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Emilio J. Rodríguez Posada — CC BY-SA 4.0
**Two cathedrals joined along a shared wall — one Romanesque of the 12th century, one Gothic of the 16th — with an astronaut carved on the newer front** — in the heart of the city. ⚠ **The arrangement is unusual**: **when a new cathedral was resolved on in 1513 the old one was not demolished** — ✅ **because demolishing it would have brought the new one down during construction**; **so both remain**. ✅ **The Old Cathedral (1150)** is austere Romanesque with the scaled dome of the **Torre del Gallo**, and an altarpiece of 53 panels. ✅ **The New** is late Gothic and Baroque, vast and light. ⚠ **On its northern *Puerta de Ramos* are a carved astronaut and a creature eating an ice cream** — ⚠ **and this is no mystery**: **restorers added them in 1992** as a modern signature on an old custom.
Austere Romanesque with a 53-panel altarpiece.
A scaled dome above the Old Cathedral.
A walk above the vaults and along the galleries over the city.
Plaza de Anaya, 37008 Salamanca, Spain
**Because the restorers signed their work — an old custom, not a mystery.** ✅ **What happened**: **in 1992 the northern front (the *Puerta de Ramos*) was restored** ahead of that year's celebrations, ⚠ **with parts of the carving eroded and missing and needing replacement**. ✅ **In the new sections the craftsmen added**: **an astronaut**, **a creature (dragon- or lemur-like) holding an ice cream**, and other figures. ✅ **Why**: **a craftsman signing his work is a well-established architectural tradition** — **from the masons' heads carved into Gothic cathedrals to the mocking faces in friezes**; ⚠ **and the principle in conservation is that restoration should be distinguishable from the original rather than imitate it** — **so an openly contemporary element serves that principle**. ✅ **The restorer said so publicly.** ⚠ **What followed**: **stories of a «prophecy» or «time travel» spread online** — ✅ **all baseless**, **and the history is fully documented**. ⚠ **The astronaut was vandalised in 2010** and repaired. ✅ **And the true story is better than the myth**: **craftsmen in the 1990s decided to leave their mark, exactly as their predecessors did five centuries before**.
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