Salamanca City

Salamanca City | La Alberca

As you might expect from a major city in Castilla with a university dating from the early twelfth century, it has quite a bit of impressive architecture including a couple of cathedrals, a fabulous Plaza Mayor, palaces, a brilliant Art Deco & Art Nouveau museum, (whose only downside is their inexcusable prohibition on photography), endless monasteries, churches, even some passable modern stuff. Having said that, it also features my least favourite of all architectural styles, known as "Plateresque", supposedly reminiscent of ornate silverwork. I suspect that Ruskin would agree with me that this style which is almost a pastiche, untrue to the underlying structure and simply superficial decoration is not a high form of architecture. Salamanca also offers a number of other aberrant architectural devices, amongst them the silly inverted arches in the Patio de Escuelas, which again contradict their structural function. Despite being a large city with a population over 200,000 the interesting bits are all within easy walking distance in the centre of the Old Town, the whole of which has been designated an UNESCO World Heritage Site. Inevitably it suffers the occasional trappings of tourist tat plus the inexorable cancer of McD, but all this is more than made up for by some quite excellent restaurants even in the Plaza.

Salamanca Images	Cathedral	La Clerecia	Casa de Conchas

Central Market	Plaza Mayor	Puente Romano	University