The Cathedral of Santa María y San Julián is the main temple of the Spanish city of Cuenca, seat of the Diocese of Cuenca.

On September 21, 1177, Alfonso VIII of Castile reconquered the city of Cuenca. It was constituted as an episcopal see in the year 1183.

The construction of the cathedral was inspired by the wife of Alfonso VIII, Eleanor of England or Plantagenet (1160-1214), daughter of King Henry II Plantagenet of England (1133-1189) and of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Duchess of Aquitaine and sister of Richard the Heart de León (1157-1199). For her dowry, Eleanor of England or Plantagenet, Countess of Gascony, she is accompanied by Norman knights.

At this time, the predominant architectural style in the Spanish Christian kingdoms was Romanesque, but the Norman influence in the court of King Alfonso VIII determined the construction of this cathedral, which was the first Gothic cathedral in Castile along with that of Ávila. In a Gothic style linked to the masters of French Champagne, the works began in 1196 and were completed in 1257. However, like most religious buildings, it has undergone transformations over time: in the 15th century the Gothic chevet was rebuilt; the exterior of the cathedral was almost completely renovated in the 16th century; and in the seventeenth century the Sagrario chapel was built and the façade and towers were renovated in a Baroque style. In the 18th century the new main altar was built; and at the beginning of the 20th century, due to the collapse of 1902, the façade was rebuilt following the original Gothic style.

The highlight of the building is that it belongs to a very early approach to Gothic architecture, closely related to French 12th-century Anglo-Norman and Franco-Norman art, such as the cathedrals of Soissons, Laon and Paris.

The fact that the discovery of America coincided in the year 1492, during the development of the work, led to the carving of animals typical of the new discovered lands, making Cuenca's iconography special. Taking this into account, the iconography presented by the Cuenca Cathedral is of a fantastic, mythological type and of human figures, interspersing among them icons of a vegetal type such as leaves, stems, fruits and twisting shoots along the stems. However, what really distinguishes it from other cathedrals are those animals that, unknown in the West, are present in its Gothic arcades from the late 15th century, such as the armadillo, the puffer fish and the turtle.