A quiet, clean city, swept unceasingly by wind and rain, Oviedo at first sight recalls but faintly its glorious past. Yet when we look carefully about us, we find that time has been kind to those early sanctuaries which were the cause of the town’s existence, and which have merited for it the title of ‘the holy.’ Approaching more as a pilgrim than a critic, in no sceptical frame of mind, you will find few places in Spain more deeply interesting. And though it is neither the oldest nor the most interesting architecturally of the local monuments, your steps will turn at once to the Cámara Santa, attached to the cathedral--the Palladium of Spain.
In the seventh century (so runs the legend) when the hosts of Khosru threatened the Holy Land, an ark or coffer, worked by the disciples of the Apostles and full of relics of ineffable sanctity, was conveyed by pious hands to Egypt. Thence it was transported to Cartagena, thence to Toledo; and when that city in its turn was menaced by the ever-advancing Saracen, it was taken by King Pelayo to the cave of Monsagro, ten miles from Oviedo. When the chaste king and his architect, Tioda, re-erected the basilica of San Salvador, founded by Froila, in the year 802, a chapel dedicated to San Miguel, and now called the Cámara Santa, was built expressly to receive this venerated reliquary.
This sanctuary is now approached from the south side of the cathedral by a flight of twenty-two steps, built in the sixteenth century. We reach first the chapel, or ante-cámara, restored if not entirely constructed in the reign of Alfonso VI. (1072-1109), and representing the highest pitch of development reached at that time by Romanesque art in Spain. The roof is groined, and supported on each side by six columns built into the wall. Each column consists of two pilasters, rising from high pedestal bases, and supporting the statues of two Apostles. These figures are expressive, though rude, and the draperies are graceful and natural. At their feet are fantastic animals. The capitals of the columns are richly and beautifully carved with foliage, and with compositions representing scenes from the life of the Saviour and combats between men and lions. The capitals of the small pillars at the corners of the pedestals are also curious and delicately carved. Over the door are three heads in relief, of Christ, the Virgin, and St. John, early Romanesque work once painted and then disfigured by whitewash. The pavement of hard _argamasa_, or tessellated work, resembles, as Ford remarks, Norman-Byzantine works in Sicily. Beneath is a crypt, or lower chapel, dedicated to St. Leocadia.