Explorer Oviedo

The Monastery of San Pelayo is a convent of Benedictine nuns beside Oviedo Cathedral. It was founded by King Alfonso II and dedicated to Saint Pelagius after his relics arrived in 994. The present buildings, with a long stone front over three arches, come mostly from rebuilding after the 16th century. The church is open for services; the enclosure is not.

The Monastery of San Vicente, behind the apse of Oviedo Cathedral, goes back to a church founded in 761 that is linked to the origins of the city. Its 16th-century cloister and the monastic buildings around it have housed the Archaeological Museum of Asturias since 1952, which shows finds from prehistory to the Middle Ages.

Oviedo Cathedral, the Cathedral of San Salvador, stands where King Fruela I founded a church in 781. The Gothic building was begun in 1388 and its tower was completed in the 16th century. The visit covers the nave, the cloister, the church museum and the Cámara Santa, a 9th-century chapel that keeps relics and two jewelled crosses of the Asturian kings.

The Church of San Tirso stands beside Oviedo Cathedral and was founded under King Alfonso II at the end of the 8th century, reportedly by his architect Tioda. A fire in 1521 and later rebuilding left little of the first church; the main survival is a pre-Romanesque triple window at the east end. It is still in use as a parish church.

La Foncalada is a public fountain built over a spring outside the old walls of Oviedo in the 9th century, under the Asturian kings. The small vaulted stone house is crowned by the Victory Cross, with Latin inscriptions below it. It is one of the few early medieval civil works for public use still standing, and part of the UNESCO site.

The Church of San Isidoro el Real on Oviedo's Plaza de la Constitución was built between 1578 and 1681 as the Jesuit church of San Matías. The parish of San Isidoro, founded around 1200, moved into it in 1770. Its stone front with a tall bell tower faces the town hall, and the interior holds Baroque altarpieces and the tomb of Bishop Martín Carrillo.

Plaza de la Escandalera is a square in central Oviedo between the old town and the 19th-century shopping streets, next to the Campo de San Francisco park. Casa Conde, an eclectic building of 1904 with a mansard roof, fills its north side. The square has a fountain, bronze statues of Asturian ponies and Fernando Botero's sculpture La Maternidad.

San Julián de los Prados, also called Santullano, is a church built around 830 for King Alfonso II of Asturias by his court architect Tioda. It has a nave and two aisles, a tall transept and three chapels at the east end. Inside, wall paintings of painted architecture in a Roman manner survive. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Asturian monuments.

The Basilica of San Juan el Real is a parish church in central Oviedo, built from 1912 to 1915 to designs by the architect Luis Bellido on the site of an older church demolished in 1882. It has a Latin-cross plan with side chapels and a dome behind a twin-towered front. Francisco Franco married here in 1923, and the church became a minor basilica in 2014.

Santa María del Naranco was built as a palace for King Ramiro I of Asturias on the slope of Mount Naranco above Oviedo and completed in 842; it became a church in the 12th century. The two-storey stone hall has a barrel-vaulted upper room with open loggias at each end. It is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is seen on guided visits.

San Miguel de Lillo is a church on Mount Naranco built for King Ramiro I and consecrated in 848, about 100 metres from Santa María del Naranco. Only its western part stands, as the rest collapsed in the 12th or 13th century. The carved stone jambs of the entrance and the windows cut from single slabs of stone remain. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site.