Last full day in Spain: Tour of Salamanca

Tour of Salamanca: When arriving at Salamanca, our tour guide first showed us El Río Tormes, which runs through Salamanca, and the Roman bridge that crosses it. Our goal for the day was to see the New Cathedral, the University of Salamanca, and the Plaza Major. We started with the New Cathedral, which has the original Cathedral still standing along with the new building added. The Cathedral was initially built in 1140, fun fact is that before they included the newer part of the Cathedral in 1513, their plans were to tear down the old cathedral and completely rebuild. During the 220 years it took to finish the Cathedral, multiple architectural styles were used in the process, including Romanesque, Gothic and Baroque. During the Romanesque style, we can see that the windows were made very small so that arrows thrown at the Cathedral were unable to pass through to the inside. Another fun fact is that in 1973 a family lived in the bell tower and they were in charge of ringing the bells every hour on the hour. The family was referred to as Los Campaners, or the bell ringers.

When walking towards the altar, you can see 53 painted tiles which represent the story of Jesus. These tiles were painted by an Italian named, Nicolas de Florencia. Afterwards, we visited the University of Salamanca, founded in 1218 and is known as the oldest university in Spain.

It is said that if students could find the frog in the Plateresco architecture outside then they would pass all their classes. In actuality, the frog represented sexual temptation and death. Originally, the University was an all male school and if they paid any mind to women they would fail classes and possibly die. The frog on the skull was to remind the boys each day they entered the building to focus on their classes and not on the women. To finish the tour, our guide took us to the Plaza Mayor de Salamanca. Similar to every other Plaza Mayor, the balconies above the coffee shops and and restaurants, were once used by spectators when watching bullfights. However, there was one part of the Plaza that stood out for me. There was a statue of an elephant upside down on it's trunk, sculpted by Spanish artist, Miguel Barceló. It is said that the elephant represents the equilibrium necessary for artistic creativity.