LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMVIII Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable , Printers to His Majesty To THE MARQUIS OF VIANA The History of whose House Is indissolubly connected With the Grandest Traditions of Spain This Volume is Dedicated With a Sincere Expression Of the Author’s Esteem...

In the plan of this book, as in the other volumes of the Series, the text has been made subordinate to and explanatory of the illustrations, which, I venture to hope, will be found to form a complete and useful panorama of the monumental glories of these grand old cities. I have not proposed to write a guide-book for the tourist, but rather to supply him with a souvenir, and to provide a manual for those interested in architecture and archæology. I have avoided technology as much as possible, as

after the Roman walls the most ancient building in Leon, occupies the site of a chapel and nunnery consecrated in 966 and rebuilt by Alfonso V. Fernando I. , who reigned over Leon and Castile from 1033 to 1065, obtained from the Amir of Seville the body of the doctor, San Isidoro. To receive this venerated relic a new church was built, and solemnly dedicated on December 21, 1063. Two years later the bones of the martyr San Vicente were transported hither from Avila. In the next century the churc

of Leon marks the second period of the city’s history and of the architecture of northern Spain. San Isidoro stands for the infant monarchy, with its Byzantine traditions handed down from the Visigothic kings; the cathedral, for the strong, ever-expanding realm of Leon and Castile, in close touch and sympathy with the great Catholic world of the west. San Isidoro is Romanesque; the cathedral is not only Gothic, but purely French, closely resembling Amiens and Rheims. It is a magnificent exotic.

Built at the instance of an English bishop and, like all the cathedrals of northern Spain, on a French model, the church of Santa Maria la Mayor is conspicuously more Spanish than that of either Leon or Toledo. This more national character may be due to later additions and alterations—alterations and additions which have neither obscured nor impaired that wonderful unity and harmony of design apparent in this, the ideal Gothic church. The cathedral occupies the site of a church built in 1075, wh

The other great ecclesiastical building of Burgos belongs nearly to the same period as the cathedral. The Cistercian convent of Santa Maria la Real de las Huelgas was founded in 1180 by Alfonso VIII. and his Queen Eleanor, daughter of our Henry II. —to propitiate the Heavenly Powers after the rout of Alarcos, it is asserted by some. The architect appears to have been a countryman of his royal mistress—an Angevin—and his work was certainly copied in those churches which were built by Spaniards. T

The primitive cathedral of Salamanca is said to have been the church of San Juan el Blanco, in the riverside suburb. Its proportions and situation were not suited to the dignity of the new city founded by Count Raymond, and we find him before long laying the first stone of a new cathedral on one of the three eminences enclosed within the walls. The exact date of the foundation and the names of the architects are unknown. But tradition avers that Bishop Jeronimo consecrated the church, and the ma

It may be presumed that the faithful of Salamanca had suffered for a number of years on account of the smallness of their cathedral; for the demand for a new place of worship is not traceable to any immediate or special cause, nor to any particular individual. At the instance of the bishop and the municipality, Fernando and Isabel, in the year 1491, solicited and obtained from Pope Innocent VIII. authority to erect a new cathedral at Salamanca, on the ground that the old fabric no longer suffice

thanks to which the name of Salamanca was honourably known throughout the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries from Lisbon to Novgorod, was founded by Alfonso IX. , King of Leon, in the first quarter of the thirteenth century—moved thereto, it is said, by the establishment of the university of Palencia by his cousin of Castile. Consequent on the union of the two kingdoms in the person of Fernando III. , the latter university declined and faded out of existence, Salamanca thus remaining

Among the sacred edifices of Salamanca, next to the two cathedrals, ranks the church and convent of the Dominicans, variously known as Santo Domingo and San Estéban. The Dominicans, on their establishment at Salamanca in the year 1221, were first housed at San Juan el Blanco. Thirty years later they removed to San Estéban. Their convent was honoured in 1484 by the presence of Columbus, who found a generous host, a powerful protector, and a mind sufficiently broad to comprehend his project in the

Salamanca contains several old mansions of the nobility, which might well have delighted Prout. However remote may have been the date of their foundation, later restoration has given them for the most part a plateresque or Renaissance aspect. The Casa de las Salinas was built for the Fonseca family in 1538, and was afterwards used as a place of storage for salt. It is considered to be the best example of the plateresque style in the city. The four arches of the principal façade spring from grani