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date: 17/05/2012 latest update: 15/05/2012
History of the building of the cathedral: Origins
The hill of Gasteiz circa 8th century.
Detail of the buildings in the middle of the 10th century, where the stone footings can be observed.
The village of Gasteiz in the early part of the 11th century.
Picture on the left: Doorjamb and beginning of an arch that indicate the location of the oldest documented gateway of the city of Vitoria.Picture on the right: Image of the Gasteiz fortified wall of the middle of the 12th century, in which we can see the first church that the Cathedral would later be built over.
The archaeological research undertaken over the last few years, within the context of the restoration works carried out on Santa María Cathedral, has established that a primitive settlement already existed in the 8th century AD on the eastern flank of Villasuso. Remains of this settlement, which was the original village of Gasteiz, include postholes, pits and ditches fashioned into the rock. This is all that is left of an architecture in wood which also included all kinds of perishable materials, such as clay, straw or branches.
We also know for certain that a very significant new technique was introduced around 950 AD into some of the buildings of this village: stone footings to support the upright wooden posts that would have previously been dug directly into the ground. Their aim seems obvious: to keep the posts from rotting, extending the life span of these buildings.
While the second half of the 10th century is therefore worthy of mention due to the technical innovations that were introduced, the first decades of the 11th century became especially relevant because a significant change occurred in the shape and layout of the village. Around the turn of the millenium, the first few streets appeared (which correspond to the present streets of Las Escuelas and Santa María), and the first terraced houses with shared partition walls, suggesting a certain level of hierarchical town planning, with the distribution of the village becoming more compact - as the written documents point out, kasa iuxta kasa.
The last stage in this urban transformation can be found at the end of the 11th century, when the first fortified wall was built around Gasteiz. Some of the more spectacular remains of this wall are still part of the cathedral walls. Contrary to what the learned people in the 19th and 20th centuries thought, therefore, the most ancient edification is not the tower that can still be seen from Cuchillería Street (which is from a later date, as we will explain). Instead, the oldest walls that still stand had gone by unnoticed, and they are the ones that close the Northern side of the present-day portico. Embedded in this wall is the first great gateway into the city (or what is left of its right doorjam), the oldest of the remaining entrances, which can be seen from the passageway of Santa María. Thanks to the remains of the archway, we can calculate its size: it would have reached 7 metres high and 4.5 metres wide. This gateway – which came before the cathedral itself and Alfonso VIII's project – was taken down when the building works for the new temple reached it. The rest of the wall (which closes the present-day portico), was kept, giving this side of the portico its strange shape, the only explanation for this being that it was adapted to fit a previous construction. Once the access had been knocked down, a new one had to be built, and this was done next to the previous one towards the west by opening another big arch into the old wall. To do this, materials from the previous opening were used. The second great gateway into the city remained in use until the second half of the 15th century, when a portico was built to protect the main entrance to the cathedral. At this moment, the gateway which had been used for over two centuries was closed. We know through surviving documents that, in the year 1536, a third gateway was built in present-day Fray Zacarías Street. Its existence at this location lasted from 1536 to the middle of the 19th century, as can be seen on the maps that still exist. It was there in 1825, but had disappeared, however, by 1860.
Finally, and although they do not affect the structure of the present building, we must mention the existence of the remains of the foundations of two older churches, with a very different orientation. The first of them, which is the origin of present-day Santa María cathedral, was built in the central decades of the 12th century, adjacent to the inner face of the city wall. Its construction had direct repercussions on the uses of the space, as it went from being a residential area to a religious and funerary one. The second of the churches was built as a fortified temple by order of Alfonso VIII.
