Salamanca

We have just spent two days in Salamanca. What a great city! I keep saying that about every single city we visit, but it's true, and what is even better, due to the regional nature of Spain each one is great in a unique way.

Salamanca's character, like Oxford or Cambridge, is moulded by its university whose faculty buildings are spread across the old city. Salamanca too, is best viewed from across its river. It cannot quite rival the idyllic pastoral vista of Oxford from Christchurch Meadow, but then its Anglican twin can't quite equal the sheer grandeur of Salamanca's High Baroque monuments nor its venerable Roman bridge.

The city and roman bridge from across the Rio Tormes

The cathedral mixes Gothic and Baroque elements - but still looks coherent.

Salamanca University was founded in the early 13th Century, some of the buildings are late medieval, though most date from the 17th and I8th centuries. Spain developed a variant of Renaissance architecture called plateresque. It is more ornate than classically derived Italianate buildings: unsurprisingly, the Spanish style reveals both Islamic and Gothic influences.

The oldest university library building in continuous use - over 500 years

You can sense Moorish influences in this Renaissance period courtyard

An eclectic mix of styles on the old cathedral portal

18th century sculpture on a Gothic facade

It looked a bit like Gormenghast to me!

The 18th century buildings are almost overwhelming in scale. As you wander about the sheer wealth and power of the Counter Reformation church strikes you. Both the University buildings dating from this time and the ecclesiastical are impressive rather than lovely, to my mind. They are products of absolutism, designed to impress through scale and power rather than persuade through beauty.

The buildings are so big it's tricky to photograph them

This small square is one of the few places you can get a more general vista of the university area.

What saves Salamanca from being overwhelmed by its autocratic past is the energy and vivacity of its street life. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the famous central square, built in 1755 in an unremittingly ornate late Baroque style. When we first walked across it in the morning it seemed dull, it's architectural uniformity somewhat tedious. By mid-afternoon the square had been taken over by groups of older school kids all meeting up to celebrate Friday, and the end of term . There was a real buzz about the place, but this was nothing to how it felt the next day. On Saturday everyone heads for the centre of town, particularly Playa Major to meet, chat, fill the cafes to overflowing, flirt, sit down, lie down, try out some impromptu flamenco moves, read a book, walk hand in hand, play tag; just being among it all lifts the spirits - it is a lovely, convivial, humane place.

Friday, 10am - hardly a soul about, the square looks somewhat empty and severe...

By 4pm. it's alive with older school students getting into an end of term mood...

By Saturday late afterrnoon, all human life is out there...

cafe's are full...

and there is a happy hubbub in the early Spring sunshine.