Interior view

In April 1528 Diego de Siloé left Burgos for Granada, where he designed the cathedral (1528-43) and executed many designs for churches and their sculptural decoration.

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).

Two superposed Corinthian orders rise to receive the ten ribs of the dome and a series of triumphal arches leads into the ambulatory; the height of the building is twice its diameter, and the cupola is decorated with gold stars on a blue background. The stained-glass windows, designed by Siloé himself (1554 and 1560), confer a distinctive character on this area of the building, contrasting with the clear light of the nave and transepts. The independence of the two sections of the cathedral was also reinforced by the introduction of a secondary transept into the middle bay of the nave; this was to be surmounted by a lantern but, like Siloé's designs for the vaults, the scheme was never carried out. The nave piers, composed of Corinthian engaged columns raised on pedestals, with a further order of pilasters above, follow Vitruvian proportions.

View the ground plan of Granada cathedral.