The church's western façade, influenced by Paris and Reims cathedrals, may be seen from the Plaza de Santa María stairway.

The Santa María façade, with three pointed and flared arches, shelters the Puerta Real, or Puerta del Perdón, in the center and the Puertas de la Asunción and Inmaculada on the sides in the lower half. This doorway, built in the 13th century and dedicated to the Virgin, was considered the most important Gothic sculptural manifestation in Castile, but its serious deterioration forced the austere reconstruction of the side doors in 1663 by Juan de Pobes and the central one, in neoclassical style, with a linteled opening and triangular pediment, in 1790. The side doors' tympana are decorated with reliefs of the Conception and the Coro.

Cathedral illuminated.
The second portion of the façade's central street has a 13th-century Cistercian rose window with tracery of a six-pointed star or Solomon's seal. In the third section of the same street is an elegant gallery, punctuated by spires and several pinnacles, and formed by two large windows with mullions and tracery of three quadrilobed oculi. Under the eight arches that form the mullions of both arches are the statues of the first eight Castilian kings, from Ferdinand I to Ferdinand III. A magnificent crescent-railing of pointed arches crowns the roadway, above which is a statue of the Virgin and Child with the phrase Pulchra es et decora. Juan de Colonia constructed this mid-15th-century finial.

Above the side doors of the first section are two almost twin 13th-century towers with three sections, pilasters decorated with pinnacles and statues at their angles, and decorated pointed openings on each side of each section: one flared with a mullion and oculus tracery, covered with stained glass in the first section; two twinned openings without mullion or tracery in the second section; and another two twinned openings with mullion and tracery in the third section.

Espolón view.
Juan de Colonia added two pyramidal spires with an octagonal base and beautiful fretwork to these towers in the mid-15th century, defining the Burgos church's profile. Master Juan may have heard of the Swabian-German Cologne cathedral project, albeit the city's spires weren't erected until the 19th century. Freiburg Cathedral and Basel3 were erected before that. Bishop Alonso de Cartagena and his successor, Luis de Acuña, funded the Burgos spires. Their coats of arms and those of the Castilian-Leonese monarchy are on the parapets that connect the towers. Master Juan also placed the legends pax vobis and ecce Agnus Dei (behold the Lamb of God) and a sculpture of Saint John the Baptist on these parapets.

Two polygonal turrets with lobed arches, pinnacles, sculptures, and pyramidal spires climb up to the towers' spires and house spiral stairs to the cathedral's triforium and vaults.