The Cathedral of St. Mary the Crowned was built on the site of what used to be a mosque. After the Christians definitively drove the Moors from Gibraltar in 1462 the mosque was used as a church. The Catholic Kings, Ferdinand and Isabella decreed it to be stripped of its Christianised and extended. Their Coat of Arms was placed in the courtyard, where it can still be seen today. The Church itself extended to the opposite side of what is now Main Street.
During the Great Siege of Gibraltar it suffered tremendous damage and despite the attempts of returning exiles to rebuild, scant progress was made. In 1790, Governor Boyd offered his assistance in return for some land on which the building site stood, enabling him to re-route Main Street.
Under the statue of Our Lady of Europe there is a crypt where Bishops are buried, but until the 1800’s any person who died in Gibraltar had the right to be buried under the floor of the Cathedral. These are just a few facts about this historic Cathedral so easily found in the centre of Gibraltar.