Salamanca is worth a visit!

We are parked just over 3 kms (2 miles) from the city center of Salamanca. We set off at 10:30am to walk downtown, do some exploring, and try to match up three more of my dad's photos.

The first one was taken from the south side of the Tormes River looking towards the cathedral.

We weren't very successful with this one. Things have changed a lot and the whole shoreline of the river seems to have changed and there is a lot more vegetation and trees.

Salamanca 1954.

Salamanca 2023.

The next one was taken from the old Roman bridge. On the way there, I got this nice shot...

The Salamanca Cathedral is huge and is actually two cathedrals.

Taken from the Roman Bridge in Salamanca 1954.

2023.

Then we went over to the cathedral itself. Along the way, we stopped into a free document museum that had an odd display of Freemason stuff. Apparently Dictator Franco didn't like the Freemasons and had confiscated a bunch of artifacts.

Strange.

 As I said the cathedral is actually two cathedrals... the old one built in the 13th century, and the "new" one built in the 16th century.

We didn't expect there to be many changes between my dad's photo and now, but it was difficult to get the same angle because there is now a garden and trees.

Salamanca Cathedral 1954.

We think this is where he may have stood!

And there is construction going on at the base of it as well.

The detail on the exterior of the church is amazing.

You'll have to click on this photo to make it full screen, then click again to zoom in and explore the detail.

Front entrance.

The front entrance was renovated in 1992, and the artists put in some non religious decorations on their own...

These are tiny little figurines. An astronaut.

A dragon eating an ice cream cone!

A stork.

View from the cathedral entrance.

They wanted too much money to go inside the cathedral, but the self guided tower tour with a view was a reasonable €4 ($6 CAD, $4.50 USD) per person and it turned out to be well worth it.

You got much better views of the architecture.

Half way up, they have some outdoor walkways.

The church has some merlons as well!

The tower tour includes an interior walkway as well!

You certainly got a different view inside the cathedral up high. You were of course much closer to the ceiling, so you could see things that weren't as visible if you had been way down on the floor.

Hmm.

Yikes.

Stained glass windows.

Back outside again.

Stork on the building next door

Scenery along the way.

We are headed up there.

There was a narrow curved staircase with a green light red light system so that you could only go one direction at a time. When we got to the top, it was crowded with a school group, but they headed back down soon afterwards.

Too crowded!

Great views from the top.

But we are no higher than the church itself.

The school group disappeared.

The old wooden structure that holds one of the 12 bells.

Salamanca has the third oldest university in the world.

The Shell House... decorated with shell motifs.

Lots of people around the main plaza.

Modern gas station in old town.

There is still a little more that we want to see here so we are headed back into old town this morning.

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