The Cathedral of Segovia was the largest construction project of contemporary times in the city of the Aqueduct. It lasted three stages, from 1525 to 1686, a period during which different masters intervened with the challenge of maintaining both its interior and … On the outside, the Gothic premises with which it was designed despite the fact that over time Renaissance forms tried to impose themselves. Its construction was possible thanks, above all, to the efforts of the faithful of Segovia as well as to the money of the city or the town hall, coming in part from the compensation paid to the Cabildo for the destruction of the old seo. It was “an ambitious and complex project of faith which lasted decades and centuries”, underlines the diocese.
The aim of the exhibition “The Construction of a Cathedral” is to convey to the public the scale of the monument and to visualize the process that was followed step by step, as well as the elements that were used to build the monument. Materials and tools preserved in the Cathedral of Segovia, inaugurated this Thursday.
Marked in the fifth centenary of the museum’s construction, the permanent exhibition is located on the south side of the cloister. There, first of all, two granite stones were installed, one partially cut and the other ready for laying, which were extracted from the quarries and transported.
The diocese explains that part of the stone came from the old cathedral, but that “another good part” was extracted from neighboring quarries: “from El Parral, the softest and most porous for the walls; from Cigüeñuela, the hard granite for canals or gargoyles, and from Madrona, which was used to carve the ribs.
The exhibition tour continues with a cart similar to those used at the time to move the stone on site. Likewise, among the curious elements on display are the tongs and ropes that lifted the stone blocks using pulleys, of which five different types are preserved. “It consists of a ‘fault of wheels’ pulley, a pile – a term applied to the pulley or pulley, consisting of a wheel or pulley with a metal axle used to suspend scaffolding and lift loads – and three modern iron pulleys.”
An ancient wooden lathe and a more modern iron lathe, whose function was to widen the rise of the material, are also added to the exhibition, which includes explanatory texts for each element.
The visit ends with the exhibition of a panel illustrated with reproductions of ancient medieval drawings preserved in bibles, codices, chronicles and books of hours. This is the case, for example, of the “Cantigas de Santa María”, in which we observe the use of some of the instruments mentioned above.
The canon responsible for the rooms, José Antonio Velasco Pérez, participated in the opening ceremony; the curator of the exhibition, Santiago Huerta Fernández, and the dean of the Cathedral, Rafael de Arcos Extremera.
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