Church of San Martiño

Finished in 1434 and listed as a Bien de Interés Cultural, it is a landmark of Galician Gothic: a single nave and a polygonal east end with a rib vault, braced outside by battlements that give it a fortress-like air. It was built under Archbishop Lope de Mendoza, who appears on the north doorway tympanum with the Virgin and Child and St Joseph. The main doorway tympanum shows his arms with chequered crescents.

The nave is strikingly wide, lit by stained glass in the walls, around the altar and in the west rose. In the late 16th century the Valderrama chapel, with the font, was opened on the epistle side.

The façade facing Tapal Square has a sculpted portal in the tradition of Master Mateo’s Pórtico da Gloria in Santiago: monsters at the bases, apostles on two levels in the jambs, and on the archivolts twelve elders with musical instruments around Christ the Judge. The Annunciation is carved at the springing of the archivolts. The portal, crowned by the rose window, is flanked by masses that end in the belfry and the clock tower.

Folk tradition tells of a curse on the unfinished tower: anyone who tries to complete the second tower will come to a bad end. An old master mason is said to have fallen while working; the death of film director Claudio Guerín on the last day of shooting The Bell from Hell (1973), after rebuilding the second tower in plaster, brought the legend back.