General view

The sculptor and architect Diego de Siloé's achievements are recognized as among the finest of the Spanish Renaissance. His sculpture is considered the high point of the Burgos Plateresque; his Granada Cathedral is considered the finest of all Plateresque buildings and one of the most magnificent of all cathedrals.

In his design for the transepts and nave of Granada Cathedral, Siloé combined the five-aisled plan of Toledo Cathedral with the elevation of Seville Cathedral, but the choir (the intended burial place of Emperor Charles V) was a domed rotunda surrounded by an ambulatory and chapels, the first structure of its kind to be built by a Spanish architect in the 16th century. The large rotunda, which is clearly distinguished from the rest of the building by its structural elements, light, and colour, is often considered to be a copy of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, but it can also be linked to Late Antique centralized buildings (e.g. Santa Costanza, Rome) and to Spanish Gothic octagonal funeral chapels (e.g. Capilla del Condestable, Burgos Cathedral).

View the ground plan of Granada cathedral.