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| City Guide - Santiago de Compostela - City Overview | ||
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City Overview Santiago de Compostela has been a travellers' destination for so long that it boasts the oldest hotel in the world, the Hostal dos Reis Católicos, situated in the beautiful old square, Praza do Obradoiro. The city was also the subject of the first guidebook in history - the early twelfth-century Codex Calixtinus - part of which details the famous pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela, the Camino de Santiago (Road of St James), and the various landmarks on the way. Its importance in the history of Christianity is such that some commentators have labelled it the third holiest of Christian cities, after Jerusalem and Rome. Today, it is one of the loveliest historic places in Spain: an exquisitely preserved medieval cathedral town, centred on the shrine of St James. The winding narrow streets of the Old Quarter are built from local granite and on clear days, the bare stone surfaces of the city glow in the sunlight; the Praza do Obradoiro, with the great Baroque façade of the Cathedral, is especially glorious. The entire Old Quarter is a honeycomb of architectural charm, perfect for wandering around and gasping with delight. It is almost entirely Romanesque and Baroque: the city's eighteenth-century ecclesiastical patrons lavished so much wealth on architectural ornament that it even evolved its own style, known as Galician Baroque. Its artistic and historical importance was attested when the entire city was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993, and then compounded by becoming a European city of culture for the year 2000. But Santiago de Compostela is far more than a stone relic. The Road of St James is still used as a pilgrim's route, bringing thousands of people each year from around the world to the Cathedral - as indeed, it has for the whole of the last millennium. The luckiest and pluckiest pilgrims actually make it to the shrine of St James to witness grand and solemn ceremonies, with the great botafumeiro swinging above the heads of worshippers in the Cathedral transept, dispensing clouds of sweet-smelling incense. Added to this, Santiago de Compostela has a key regional role within the province of Galicia. There is a strong Celtic strain in Galicia, and Santiago de Compostela is the capital of a region that is strongly defined, with a self-conscious and aggressively self-promoting regional identity. Although its writers may hymn the Celtic mysteries of Galician forests and misty groves, Santiago de Compostela is also the focus of modern broadcasting, press and publishing enterprises designed to reinforce Galego (Galician) as a language and a unifying cultural force. The University (founded in 1501) has long given Santiago de Compostela an entirely unhistoric buzz of activity in bars, cafés and restaurants. Small enough to be strongly influenced by its university, Santiago de Compostela revels in a continuously refreshed influx of youthful energy and inventiveness that treats the grand stone edifices like the most superb of stage sets. |
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