Built by the Crown of Aragon on the site of a Moorish-era mosque, the cathedral is 121 metres long, 55 metres wide and its nave is 44 metres tall. By way of comparison, the height of the central nave reaches 33m in Notre Dame de Paris, 38m in Reims, 42m in Notre-Dame d'Amiens and 48m in Saint-Pierre de Beauvais, the highest of all Gothic cathedrals. Designed in the Catalan Gothic style but with Northern European influences, it was begun by King James I of Aragon in 1229 but only finished in 1601