By Rafe Calder
The sources do not agree on when the Plaza Mayor of Salamanca was finished. One says 1729. Another says it was begun in 1729 and finished in 1755. That is a gap of twenty-six years, and it is a good place to begin, because Salamanca is a city that has been written about for a long time by people who did not quite check each other.
Where it is
Wikipedia places Salamanca in Castile and León, as the capital of its province, on the northern half of the Meseta Central, straddling the river Tormes at 802 metres. It gives the population as 144,458 in 2024. The UNESCO page describes the place as an ancient university town northwest of Madrid and says the Carthaginians first conquered the city in the third century BC, after which it became a Roman settlement and was ruled by the Moors until the eleventh century.
The square
Wikipedia calls the Plaza Mayor Baroque, designed by Alberto and Nicolás Churriguera, completed in 1729, and “the most important public space and heart of the city”. UNESCO tells it differently: King Philip V ordered the square in 1710, construction began in 1729 under plans by Alberto de Churriguera, and Andrés García de Quiñones finished it in 1755. A Camino de Santiago travel guide adds that it was declared a National Monument in 1935. We set the two dates side by side and choose neither.
The university
Wikipedia says the University of Salamanca was founded in 1218 and calls it “one of the oldest in Western Europe”, though the same page gives 1134 in one passage and says the title “University” came in 1254. The travel guide gives around 1218, under Alfonso IX of León, with Alfonso X confirming it as a university in 1254. UNESCO is vaguer: a Cathedral School existed by the late twelfth century, the old Hospital del Estudio, now the Rectorate, was built in 1413, and the university was among Europe’s top institutions by 1250. Three sources, and no two of them give the same founding picture.
Shells and towers
The Casa de las Conchas was built at the end of the fifteenth century in civilian Gothic style, says Wikipedia, with about 350 scallop shells on the facade, a motif it ties to the Order of Santiago. The travel guide says it was built in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries for Don Rodrigo Arias Maldonado, a Knight of that order, and that it now holds a public library and an exhibition hall. La Clerecía, Wikipedia says, was begun in 1617 and completed a century and a half later, a Baroque building with twin towers about 50 metres high.
Two cathedrals, one wall
The Old Cathedral is Romanesque and dates from the twelfth century, according to Wikipedia. The New Cathedral was begun in the sixteenth century in Gothic style and finished in the eighteenth, and the two meet at the Patio Chico. Wikipedia notes a crack in the New Cathedral’s tower from the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. The travel guide gives 1513 for the start of the New Cathedral and, for the Old one, “around 1509”. That second date does not fit a twelfth-century building, and we read it as a likely slip in the guide, though that is our reading and not something any source says.
The listing
The Old City of Salamanca was inscribed by UNESCO in 1988, reference 381, under three criteria. UNESCO ties the first to the Plaza Mayor as a unique Baroque achievement. It ties the second to the Churriguera family, whose “churrigueresque” style influenced the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America. The third rests on the university’s architectural heritage. The property covers 50.78 hectares with a buffer zone of 130.3 hectares.
Dates in order
- Third century BC: Carthaginians conquer the city, according to UNESCO.
- Late twelfth century: a Cathedral School exists, according to UNESCO.
- 1218: the university’s founding, according to Wikipedia and the travel guide.
- 1254: Alfonso X confirms it as a university, according to the travel guide; Wikipedia says the title came then.
- 1413: Hospital del Estudio built, according to UNESCO.
- 1617: La Clerecía begun, according to Wikipedia.
- 1710: Philip V orders the Plaza Mayor, according to UNESCO.
- 1729: the square completed, according to Wikipedia, or begun, according to UNESCO.
- 1755: the square finished, according to UNESCO; Lisbon earthquake cracks the New Cathedral tower, according to Wikipedia.
- 1935: National Monument, according to the travel guide.
- 1988: UNESCO inscription, according to UNESCO and Wikipedia.
Side by side
| Question | Source one | Source two |
|---|---|---|
| Plaza Mayor finished | 1729 (Wikipedia) | 1755 (UNESCO) |
| University founded | 1218 (Wikipedia) | 1134 in another passage of the same article |
| Old Cathedral begun | Twelfth century (Wikipedia) | “around 1509” (travel guide) |
What kind of sources these are
Wikipedia, which anyone can edit; UNESCO’s World Heritage listing, a heritage body; and a travel guide for the Camino de Santiago, which is promotional in tone. We found no municipal or university page we could read, and so we give no opening hours, entry details or transport.
What we left out
We left out the stone the buildings are made of, because none of our pages stated it. We left out anecdotes about carvings on the university facade for the same reason. We left out the church-by-church detail of the travel guide, which is thick with dates we could not set against a second source, and we left out the guide’s population figure, which was plainly mistyped.
Roam first. Shop later.