By Ines Keane
Santiago de Compostela is the capital of Galicia, in the north-west of Spain, in the province of A Coruña. According to Wikipedia, the municipality had 100,965 people on 1 January 2025. This page is about the old town and about one small craft tied to it: azabache, or jet.
What UNESCO says
UNESCO inscribed the Old Town in 1985 under three criteria, (i), (ii) and (vi). Its summary says the oldest monuments cluster around the cathedral, that the old town mixes Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassical buildings, and that the Baroque western façade is the city’s best-known symbol. The listed property covers 107.59 hectares, which UNESCO’s own integrity text rounds to 108, inside a buffer zone of 216.88 hectares, rounded to 217.
UNESCO’s account of the city’s origin is the pilgrimage account: a hermit saw a light over a forgotten Roman tomb in the early ninth century, and news spread that the tomb of St James the Greater had been found. We report that as UNESCO’s description and take no position on it. What matters for a visitor is the consequence UNESCO names: churches, hospitals and monasteries grew up along the Camino de Santiago.
The square and what is on it
The Obradoiro façade is the best-known view of the cathedral, and Wikipedia notes it appears on the Spanish 1, 2 and 5 cent euro coins. On the western side of the Praza do Obradoiro stands the eighteenth-century Pazo de Raxoi, now the city hall. To the right of the cathedral steps, Wikipedia says, is the Hostal dos Reis Católicos, founded in 1492 as a pilgrims’ hospice and now a Parador.
Inside the cathedral, the tourism site names the Pórtico de la Gloria and describes a custom of knocking one’s head three times against the statue of Master Mateo, linked to students hoping for better exam results. It also says the Holy Door opens only in Holy Years. Wikipedia and the tourism site define those years slightly differently: Wikipedia says they fall when the Feast of Saint James falls on a Sunday, and the tourism site says when 25 July falls on a Sunday. Wikipedia reports more than 272,000 pilgrims completing the route in the Holy Year of 2010.
Weather, plainly
Wikipedia gives Santiago a temperate oceanic climate with mild, wet winters. It quotes two rainfall figures: about 1,800 millimetres in its climate text, and 1,526.6 millimetres in its 1991 to 2020 table. We show both. Frost is common only in December, January and February, averaging 13 days a year.
A day beyond the cathedral
The tourism site’s one-day route also names Rúa do Franco, Rúa da Raíña and Rúa do Vilar as historic shopping streets with silver, jet and crafts, the Fonseca College with its Renaissance cloister, and the Abastos market, a food market with fish, meat and vegetable stalls. It lists Alameda Park, about ten minutes’ walk from the old town, and the Museum of the Galician People at the Convent of Santo Domingo de Bonaval, known for its triple spiral staircase.
Azabache: the black stone
The sources disagree on the plainest question, which is what azabache is. A walking-holiday company’s page calls it “black amber” and says it comes from a family of Jurassic trees that went extinct more than 65 million years ago. Wikipedia’s article on jet calls it a mineraloid, a form of lignite made from wood compressed over millions of years, and says the large northern Spanish deposit in Asturias is about 155 million years old, from the Late Jurassic. The Jurassic ended well before 65 million years ago, so the company’s two figures do not fit together. We show both and do not resolve them.
On Santiago itself, Wikipedia says that at the end of the Middle Ages the city was the main sales point for jet religious objects and amulets bought by pilgrims, and that it had workshops making artistic pieces. The walking company says jet became a popular piece of jewellery in the sixteenth century, that a street it calls Rua de Acibecheria, also spelled Azabachería, was the one designated for the only shops selling it in the old town, and that some shops there date to the 1800s. It says jet is polished until it shines and carved into scallop shells and other pilgrimage shapes.
Telling jet from a copy
Wikipedia’s jet article gives tests. Glass sold as “French jet” feels cool to the touch, while jet does not, because it conducts heat poorly. Ebonite looks very similar at first but fades. A streak on unglazed porcelain leaves brown for jet, but bog oak, vulcanite and lignite do the same, so Wikipedia says the test alone is not conclusive. The page also mentions a hot-needle test, which our reading says would mark the piece. Our reading is that none of these is a test to run on a stranger’s stock. The sensible question is the seller’s: where was this cut, from what, and can that be shown?
What kind of sources these are
UNESCO is an official listing; the national tourism site is promotional by nature; Wikipedia is open to anyone; the walking-holiday page is a company page with no named author.
What we left out
Prices, shop names, living craftspeople, ticket rules and opening hours.
Quick answers
When was Santiago de Compostela’s old town listed by UNESCO? In 1985, according to UNESCO, under criteria (i), (ii) and (vi).
What is azabache? According to Wikipedia, jet is a mineraloid, a form of lignite made from compressed wood. Asturias holds the main northern Spanish deposit.
How can you tell jet from glass? According to Wikipedia, glass feels cool to the touch and jet does not, because jet conducts heat poorly. Wikipedia adds that a streak test alone is not conclusive.
Roam first. Shop later.
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