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Some of the stones are covered with white plaster, showing they are parts of the interior of a building, and they are of the same red sandstone as the remains of the transept apse, which was undoubtedly built by Thomas.
The apse was originally three-lobed, composed of three identical chapels corresponding to the nave and aisles; in the sixteenth century the central lobe was prolonged and squared off; the same century saw the erection of the statue of San Isidoro in the southern front, which spoiled the otherwise excellently simple Romanesque portal.
The sun never penetrated to the lower part of this garden, where ivy and box alone grew luxuriantly; yet the eternal shadow there was very soft and pleasant as it fell from the gigantic brow of the apse a religious shadow, sepulchral and pure, which had a good odour about it. In the greenish half-light of its calm freshness, the two towers let fall only the sound of their chimes.
But there are no sub-arches to any of the flying buttresses, and the slopes of each are protected by lead coverings. And in the exterior of the north aisle the same elements of structure and design may be discovered, even to the presence of twelfth-century remains, the curve of the old encircling apse, and the position of the first sills, abaci, and string-courses.
"But let none of you imagine, either, that it was the beauties of art, of which you suppose the temple to be full, that engaged my attention. Those beauties, with the exception of the imposing architecture of a portion of the edifice and of the three tombs that are in the chapel of the apse, I do not see.
Most churches are built with the apse to the east, but Constantine's, like the present basilica, looked west, because from time immemorial the bishop of Rome, when consecrating, stood on the farther side of the altar from the people, facing them over it. And the church was consecrated by Pope Sylvester the First, in the year 326.
Then in 1187 the Cathedral was burnt again, and Bishop Seffrid vaulted it for the first time till then only the aisles had been vaulted building great buttresses to support this and re-erecting the inner arcade of the clerestory. Apparently the apse and ambulatory which till then had closed the great church, on the east had been destroyed in the fire.
If these portals are strangely unimportant, their insignificance does not detract materially from the stateliness of the apse, which is created by its great height one hundred and thirty feet in the interior measurement and the magnificent flying-buttresses. These flying-buttresses give to the exterior its most curious and beautiful effect.
The form of the apse has been completely changed by the introduction of an ambulatory or circular apsidal aisle dating at least from the fifteenth century, as shown by the presence of the late Gothic and Renaissance elements. The general plan is rectangular, 120 feet long by seventy-one wide, and seen from the outside is solid rather than elegant, a fortress rather than a temple.
To the north of the cathedral is the communal cistern, which covers a great part of the site of the early church of S. Thomas. In 1860 some reliquaries were found here between the cistern and the cathedral sacristy, where the centre of the apse probably was, and further investigations disclosed the steps to the presbytery, remains of the apse, and stones carved with ornament.
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