Spain's golden city — a Renaissance university town where medieval sandstone glows amber at sunset, the Plaza Mayor is the most beautiful square in Spain, and scholars have walked the same streets since 1218
Salamanca is a city of 145,000 in Castile and León, 200km west of Madrid on the banks of the Tormes River. Its historic centre is designated UNESCO World Heritage (1988) and built almost entirely in Salamanca sandstone — a local golden-amber stone that catches and holds the last light of the sun, giving the city its nickname 'La Dorada' (The Golden One). The University of Salamanca (1218) is the oldest in Spain and among the oldest in the world; its façade of intricate Plateresque stonework contains a carved frog that students traditionally find before exams as a good-luck ritual. The Plaza M…
Salamanca was settled by the Vettones (Celtic-Iberian tribe) and later the Carthaginian general Hannibal besieged it in 220 BCE on his way to Italy. The Romans built a bridge across the Tormes (the Roman bridge of 26 arches survives today) and called the settlement Helmantica. After centuries of Visigothic and then Moorish rule, Christian reconquest came in 1085 under Alfonso VI of Castile. Alfonso IX of León founded the University of Salamanca in 1218 — making it one of the earliest in the world alongside Bologna, Paris, and Oxford — and it became a European centre of theology, law, and the…