Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela
Santiago de Compostela, Galicia
The Romanesque-Gothic-Baroque cathedral that shelters the relics of St. James and the endpoint of Europe's great pilgrimage network, where pilgrims receive the compostela in the Pilgrim's Mass.
For more than a thousand years, pilgrims have walked to this cathedral to embrace the apostle behind the high altar. The Pilgrim's Mass swings the botafumeiro, the great thurible, across the crossing of a church grown Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque over the same bones.
Associated traditions & practices
Traditions from this region
Traditions historically rooted in this region — offered as background context, not as a claim about this particular place.
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