Plaza Mayor

The Plaza Mayor of Salamanca is an enclosed baroque square of golden sandstone, ringed on all four sides by arcades and three tiers of balconies, so that standing in the middle feels like being inside a single great building. At dusk the stone, quarried at nearby Villamayor, takes on the warm glow that earned Salamanca the nickname La Dorada, "the Golden City". The philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, who held a daily gathering on the terrace of the square's Café Novelty, described it as an irregular quadrilateral that is nonetheless astonishingly harmonious.

The square replaced a much larger, informal marketplace that had grown up outside a gate in the town walls next to the church of San Martín. Pushed by the royal magistrate Rodrigo Caballero, the city decided to build a regular plaza in the manner of Madrid's, and the design went to the architect Alberto de Churriguera, of the family that gave its name to the exuberant Spanish late-baroque style. Work began in 1729 with the Royal Pavilion on the east side, which also served as a retaining wall to level the sloping ground, and the San Martín pavilion on the south. Lawsuits over the houses that had to be expropriated stalled the project for fifteen years; the square was finally closed in 1755, with Andrés García de Quiñones completing the work. The city hall on the north side, crowned by a belfry added only in 1852, was meant to have two towers, but they were never built for fear the structure could not bear their weight; a model of 1745 survives. Each side measures roughly 75–83 metres, and none of the facades is the same length.

Between the 88 round arches runs a gallery of carved medallions: Spanish kings along the Royal Pavilion, and on the other sides figures such as Columbus, Cervantes, the Catholic Monarchs and Unamuno himself. Until the mid-twentieth century the centre held gardens and a bandstand; around 1953 it was cleared and paved in grey and pink granite, giving it the open form seen today. Declared a national monument, the square lies at the heart of the Old City of Salamanca, inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1988. Salamanca, on the River Tormes in Castile and León, is home to one of the oldest universities in Western Europe, which received its royal charter in 1218, and the plaza remains the city's main meeting place.

Getting there

The Plaza Mayor is in the centre of Salamanca. The main railway station, Vialia-Estación de Salamanca, has frequent trains to Madrid and Valladolid. Salamanca Airport (SLM), at the Matacán air base, is about 14 km east of the city.