2005 © Oficina Virtual de Turismo
According to an ancient tradition, the relics of St. James (Santiago el Mayor),
one of Christ’s twelve apostles, were taken to the finis terrae after his
execution in Palestine. The tomb, which fell into oblivion, was rediscovered in
the ninth century in the heart of a Galician forest. At the sacred site a
hermitage was erected which soon became insufficient to accommodate the
hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who were led by their faith along the roads
of Europe. It was for them that the town grew.
Capital of Galicia and a holy city of Christianity, the destination of
pilgrimage along the road of St. James, an episcopal seat for a thousand years
and a University town for 500, Santiago de Compostela is today a living and
monumental city, quiet and safe, perfect for walking around.
There are two basic routes for travelling through the town on foot:
The first of them starts at the Cathedral, which apart from the venerated
mausoleum houses the Pórtico de la Gloria, the universal masterpiece of the
Romanesque style. Centuries later, the Baroque would shape the main altar,
scale the main façade, erect the towers and arrange around the temple the four
monumental squares that would forever shape the urban image of the town:
Obradoiro, Platerías, Quintana and Azabachería. All of them lead, through paved
medieval streets, to urban landscapes of granite dominated by convents and
monasteries -San Martín Pinario, San Paio de Antealtares, Santo Domingo de
Bonaval, ...- which bequeathed to the city a solid medical tradition and an
educational vocation upheld by the University of Santiago. Its buildings are
part of an impressive picture in which churches are followed by ancient
hospitals, houses with aristocratic balconies, valuable museums, cloisters with
gardens, peaceful fountains and vaulted passageways. The sonorous names of the
streets remind us of the guilds that occupied them and of the gates of the
ancient wall, now disappeared.
The second route goes around the historic nucleus by a large number of parks
and gardens which have privileged vantagepoints, creeks and a thick vegetation
of species such as oaks, chestnut trees, camellias or magnolias. From the
Alameda (the poplar grove), and its eight hectares of romantic style gardens
with a nostalgic modernistc aftertaste, to the minimalistic park of Bonaval,
which used to be a monastic vegetable garden and is now surrounded by museums,
there stretches an entire “green belt” that connects a string of ancient and
new leisure areas. Here we discover the presence of a growing catalogue of
modern architecture which has sprung along the last two decades. To the
Galician Centre of Contemporary Art of Álvaro Siza or the City of Culture being
built by Peter Eisenman, have been added other designer buildings and urban
reforms -auditoriums, university buildings, institutional headquarters and
cultural or sports centres- bearing the signatures of Hejduk, Kleihues,
Isozaki, Grassi, Gallego.
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