City of Chocolate

We spent yesterday in Leon, and visited the Leon Cathedral and the Pantheon of San Isidoro.

The cathedral was amazing. Even though it is not all clean and bright like the Burgos Cathedral. Actually, they were in the delicate process of cleaning it.

The cathedral is really tall and narrow. The guide sheet called it the "height of French Gothic". But the whole upper half of the cathedral is stained glass. It´s quite a sight. There are three enormous rose windows. The windows that are clean are spectacular. But you can see why it would be hard to clean! The building contains more glass than stone. The fact that most of the building is glass has actually weakened the structure of the building so that it has fallen down a couple of times in the past!!!!!!



Some of the windows near the back of the cathedral were unusual in that they were forest themes rather than Bible themes. They were intertwined leaves and vines, with acorns and pine cones, and little faces of elves and foxes. These windows are green, red and blue. Okay, here is a picture. You are not supposed to take pictures in there but I made Anselmo take a couple (it is not his fault).

The other place we saw was the Pantheon of San Isidoro. This is a Romanesque church. We didn´t see the actual church but the "Pantheon" is a basement that has a ceiling painted with 11th century Frescoes (paintings in plaster).

Because light can´t get in the paintings are still bright and pretty. It is cool to see the art styles from 1000 years ago. The scene where the angel announces the birth of Christ to the shepherds was my favorite because it showed what the animals of that time looked like. The sheep and dogs are similar to the local breeds of today! We didn´t take any pictures there but when I get home I´ll find one online and add it.


We are currently in Astorga. It is also a city started in the Roman era. It was the first place in Europe to have chocolate. Cortes found the Native Americans enjoying chocolate in Mexico (before he killed them of course). Later, Spanish Nuns living in Mexico got the idea to combine the chocolate with cane sugar from the Canary Islands. The rest was history. Astorga has an actual Chocolate Museum, and fabrication of chocolate, as well as advertising it, is an important part of its history.