Historic Cities · Spain
Salamanca through the ages
Salamanca is a municipality and city in the autonomous community of Castile and León in Spain, and the capital of the Province of Salamanca. Attached to the comarca of Campo Charro, the city lies on the northern half of the Meseta Central, in the western-central part of the Iberian Peninsula, straddling the Tormes river.
Salamanca in 1580
The Golden University
Salamanca in 1580 is at the height of its university prestige: a city of learned houses, lit by the honey-gold stone of its façades and filled with thousands of students in capes and gowns. This walk follows the river approach, crosses the Roman bridge, threads market square and narrow lodging lanes, and reaches the carved university front, the Patio de Escuelas, the Shell House and the twin cathedrals rising above the old roofs.
The city perches low on the Tormes with a compact medieval profile of towers, spires and domes, its roofs of red clay tile and its walls of warm Villamayor sandstone that takes a burnished, almost silvered sheen at dusk. Streets compress into alleys between dense blocks of plateresque carved stone, open squares break the pattern near market stalls, and the river and Roman bridge anchor views that include scaffolded façades where new work rises beside older, rounded Norman masonry.
The route: 16 streets, squares and views
Tormes Meadows View → Puente Romano → Plaza Mayor → Casa de las Conchas → Escuelas Mayores Façade → Patio de Escuelas → Colegio Mayor de San Bartolomé → Colegio Mayor de Oviedo → Colegio Mayor de Santiago → Colegio Mayor de Cuenca → …
Step inside, 9 interiors
Tavern of the Square · Cloister of Carved Shells · Lecture Hall of Salamanca · University Chained Library · Great Stair of San Bartolomé · Refectory of Oviedo · Student Garret · Frescoed Apse · Nave Under Construction
Planned from the Wikipedia record: University of Salamanca.
