The north of Spain, in addition to being a breeding ground for legends and guarantor of an appetizing gastronomic offer, is an obligatory stop on any religious tourism route due to the countless relics that tradition has placed in different cathedrals, churches and basilicas surrounded by the Cantabrian.
One of them is the Metropolitan Basilica Cathedral of San Salvador in the Oviedo Plaza de Alfonso II, whose Holy Chamber is known for being one of the largest reliquaries in Europe. The Camino de Santiago began here in the time of King Alfonso II the Chaste, and it has been a destination for pilgrims for centuries. Its architecture, in the Gothic style, seeks to symbolically express “the desire for God that resides in the heart of man and that manifests itself through an impulse towards infinity expressed in a volume with a tendency towards the top”, as stated in the multiple tourist guides of the city.
In the Cathedral of Oviedo is the Holy Ark, a chest with sheets of silver and ornamental bas-reliefs illustrating biblical passages that Alfonso VI ordered to be built in 1075 as a substitute for an earlier one, much more modest and made of cedar wood. The original Ark was shut down in 614 by the Persian invasion of Jerusalem. From there he traveled to Oviedo fleeing from the desecrations, after passing through Toledo for a brief period of time and the Muslim conquest of the city in 711 AD.
The Holy Chamber thus became the heart of the Spanish pilgrimage and home to the relics, which before Oviedo was founded were hidden in the chapels of the Monsacro peak.
Prior to its consecration as a reliquary treasure between the 11th and 12th centuries, The Holy Chamber was the chapel of the palace that Alfonso II ordered to be built next to the Basilica of San Salvador in the 9th century. This is still divided into two levels, upper and lower. The first room is the chapel of San Miguel, home to the relics of the Cathedral and, going down the steps, is the chapel of Santa Leocadia, destined to be an episcopal pantheon where the remains of high ecclesiastical positions rest.