ped the throne.

_Logrono._--In 1435 Santa Maria la Redonda was raised to a suffragan
church of Santo Domingo de la Calzada; about this date the old building
must have been almost entirely torn down, as the ogival arches of the
nave are of the fifteenth century; so also are the lower windows which,
on the west, flank the southern door.

Excepting these few remains, nothing can bring to the tourist's mind the
fifteenth-century edifice, and not a single stone can recall the
twelfth-century church. For the remaining parts of the building are of
the sixteenth, seventeenth, and successive centuries, and to-day the
interior is being enlarged so as to make room for the see which is to be
removed here from Santo Domingo and Calahorra.

[Illustration: SANTA MARIA LA REDONDA, LOGRONO]

The interior is Roman cruciform with a high and airy central nave, in
which stands the choir, and on each hand a rather dark aisle of much
smaller dimensions.

The _trascoro_ is the only peculiarity possessed by this church. It is
large and circular, closed by an immense vaulting which turns it into a
chapel separated from the rest of the church (compare with the Church of
the Pillar of Saragosse).

True to the grotesque style to which it belongs, the whole surface of
walls and vault is covered with paintings, the former apparently in oil,
the latter frescoes. Vixes painted them in the theatrical style of the
eighteenth century.

From the outside, the regular features of the church please the eye in
spite of the evident signs of artistic decadence. The two towers, high
and slender, are among the best produced by the period of decadence in
Spain which followed upon Herrero's severe style, if only the uppermost
body lacked the circular linterna which makes the spire top-heavy.

Between the two towers, which, when seen from a distance, gain in beauty
and lend to the city a noble and picturesque aspect, the facade,
properly speaking, reaches to their second body. It is a hollow, crowned
by half a dome in the shape of a shell which in its turn is surmounted
by a plateresque cornice in the shape of a long and narrow scroll.

The hollow is a peculiar and daring medley of architectural elegance and
sculptural bizarrerie and vice versa. From Madrazo it drew the
exclamation that, since he had seen it, he was convinced that not all
monuments belonging to the grotesque style were devoid of beauty.

The date of the erection of the western front is do