While the south of the peninsula was part of al-Andalus, the Christian kingdoms of the north developed an art of their own, which in the eleventh and twelfth centuries joined the great European Romanesque movement.
Before Romanesque: Asturian and Mozarabic art
In the ninth century the small kingdom of Asturias produced an original architecture, Asturian pre-Romanesque, a UNESCO site: on Mount Naranco, near Oviedo, stand Santa María del Naranco, built as a palace for King Ramiro I, and San Miguel de Lillo; in Oviedo the Cámara Santa holds jewelled crosses such as the Victory Cross. In the tenth century Christians emigrating from al-Andalus brought Mozarabic art north, with the horseshoe arch, as in the church of San Miguel de Escalada near León, and the Beatus manuscripts, illuminated copies of Beatus of Liébana's Commentary on the Apocalypse.
Romanesque of the Way
The Way of St James was the great channel for Romanesque: pilgrims, Cluniac monks and French and Italian craftsmen brought models and ideas. Along the route stand masterpieces such as:
- the cathedral of Jaca in Aragon, among the first fully mature Romanesque buildings in the peninsula;
- the church of San Martín de Frómista, in the province of Palencia, perfect in its proportions;
- the collegiate church of San Isidoro in León, with its Pantheon of Kings covered in twelfth-century frescoes, called "the Sistine Chapel of Romanesque";
- the monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos, near Burgos, with its cloister of extraordinary capitals;
- the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, the goal of the pilgrimage, with Master Mateo's Pórtico de la Gloria (1188), one of the summits of European medieval sculpture.
Catalan Romanesque
The Catalan Pyrenees preserve an extraordinary group of stone churches with slender Lombard bell towers: the churches of the Vall de Boí, a UNESCO site, such as Sant Climent and Santa Maria de Taüll. Their frescoes, removed in the early twentieth century to protect them from the antiques trade, are now in the MNAC in Barcelona, which has the world's most important collection of Romanesque wall painting, including the Pantocrator of Sant Climent. Other examples are the monastery of Ripoll, with its great carved portal, and Sant Pere de Rodes, overlooking the sea on the Costa Brava.
In Castile, the rural Romanesque of the provinces of Palencia, Burgos, Soria and Segovia includes hundreds of small churches with porches and galleries. The transition to Gothic can be seen in cathedrals such as Ávila, the Old Cathedral of Salamanca and Zamora, with its oriental-looking dome.