León entdecken

León Cathedral is a Gothic cathedral on the Way of Saint James, begun in the mid-13th century to a French-influenced design attributed to Master Enrique and largely finished by the mid-15th century. Its walls are reduced to slender piers and filled with medieval stained glass. The cathedral museum shows sculpture and painting from its collection.

The Palacio de los Guzmanes is a Renaissance palace in León, built in the 16th century to designs by Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón for the Guzmán family. It has square corner towers, an arcaded gallery on the top floor and a two-storey courtyard. It is the seat of the provincial government; guided visits show the courtyard, staircase and gallery.

Casa Botines is a Modernista building in the centre of León, designed by Antoni Gaudí and built in 1891–1892 for a textile company as a warehouse with flats above. From 1929 it was the seat of a savings bank. Today it is a museum on the history of the building, on Gaudí and on Spanish art of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Basilica of San Isidoro is a Romanesque church in León, rebuilt in stone from 1063, when the relics of Saint Isidore of Seville were brought here. The adjoining museum includes the Royal Pantheon, burial place of the kings of León, with 12th-century wall paintings, and the cloister where the Cortes of León met in 1188.

The Convento de San Marcos is a former monastery and pilgrims' hospital of the Order of Santiago beside the Bernesga river in León. Its long Plateresque façade was begun in the 16th century and completed on the river side in the 18th. Part of the building is a parador hotel; the church and cloister rooms, including the old sacristy, are an annex of the Museo de León.

The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (MUSAC) opened in León in 2005 and collects art made since 1992. Its building by Mansilla + Tuñón won the 2007 Mies van der Rohe Award; the coloured glass panels of the façade take their colours from a stained-glass window of León Cathedral.