Published Online First on July 17, 2013 © 2013 The Geological Society of London

The use of stone is deeply rooted in Spanish building culture. The Iberian Peninsula has a wide variety of high-quality rocks well suited to use in construction, including granite, limestone, sand-stone, marble and slate. In antiquity, the type of stone used to build civil, military and religious structures was determined by the acces-sibility of the material and the workability (carving) of the stone using the technology available at that time. Consequently, in ancient times the use of stone on the Iberian Peninsula primarily was a local endeavour, because of the high cost and considerable difficulty involved in transporting large blocks over long distances. Such difficulties were aggravated by geographical peculiarities because, in addition to being one of the most mountainous regions of Europe, the peninsula has a paucity of navigable rivers. As a result, many of its cities were built with only one type of locally quarried stone and the lithological variety of their monument