Casa de las Conchas. July 2015
[from FB post: July 25, 2015]
So suppose someone graduated from the University of Salamanca... and met another person who graduated from -- I dunno Stanford, or Harvard, or Princeton, or Oxford, or Cambridge or... wherever. And that person said "My university is so old and beautiful and bla bla". Really the Salamanca grad need only yawn and say "Can I have another glass of tempranillo?" Cuz yeah.... U. of Salamanca is kind of WOOOOW.
On the same trip to Spain where I visited Zaragoza and remembered the popular summer language institute there from my university years, I also visited Salamanca. Spanish majors from Georgetown (and apparently many other universities) also studied abroad at University of Salamanca for a semester or a full academic year. I think the main reason I went out to Salamanca (which was, frankly, out of the way on that particular trip) was because I wanted to know what made it so great. I was absolutely wowed by the place.
Near the original buildings of the main campus is the Casa de las Conchas (the House of Shells) which is an extraordinarily old library:
It was built from 1493 to 1517 by Rodrigo Arias de Maldonado, a knight of the Order of Santiago de Compostela and a professor in the University of Salamanca. Its most peculiar feature is the façade, mixing late Gothic and Plateresque style, decorated with more than 300 shells, symbol of the order of Santiago, as well as of the pilgrims performing the Way of St. James. In the façade are also the coat of arms of the Catholic Monarchs and four windows in Gothic style, each one having a different shape. The entrance portal has the coat of arms of the Maldonado family, while in the architrave are dolphins, a Renaissance symbol of love, and vegetable elements.
(Wikipedia)
The venerable "House of Shells" library is not officially part of the University of Salamanca, but it was founded by one of its faculty members. I was impressed by the age and the state of preservation of the building. Only a city that valued education would have maintained it so carefully for so many centuries.
University of Salamanca is ranked as the fourth oldest in Europe, and sometimes as the second, if one counts its founding as an educational institution before it received its royal charter. It is the difference of about a century, but even going with the later date of 1218, University of Salamanca was old. It is quite ironic that as the Catholic Kings of Spain pushed the Reconquista southward and took their country back from the Moors, they were actually pushing out the very people who kept alive the Greco-Roman philosophy that inspired the Renaissance. In the early days of "higher education" in Europe, one was expected to be fluent in Ancient Greek, Classical Latin, and Classical Arabic in order to access all the proper manuscripts. How much of that ancient learning did the departing Moors leave in wake of their departure?
I felt nostalgically jealous of all my Georgetown friends who had done a year of study in Salamanca. In those days, my dream school would have been the Sorbonne, of course, because I was studying French. My adult self thinks that Salamanca with its history and international community would have been an excellent choice, too. Alas, I discovered Spain far too late in life. Que mala suerte.
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