Ciudad Rodrigo: frontier walls, the cathedral and the palaces: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
Frontier walls, the cathedral and the palaces
Ciudad Rodrigo sat on the border with Portugal, so its story is one of walls, sieges and rival noble families, and the palaces, chapels and gates on this walk are what that history left behind.
The stops
Ferdinand II of León made Ciudad Rodrigo a bishopric to hold a stronghold facing the Portuguese to the west and the Almohads to the south, and promoted this cathedral around 1168. It was built between the 12th and 14th centuries, Romanesque on its way to Gothic, with a doorway at the foot of the nave, the Pórtico del Perdón, in the style of the Portico of Glory at Santiago. A medieval bishop, Pedro Díaz, has a tomb inside, and the documents kept with it say that he rose from his coffin during his funeral to confess his sins before dying again.
Photo: Mr. Tickle — CC BY-SA 3.0 The Museo del Orinal is devoted to the chamber pot and fills an 18th-century stone building near the cathedral, once the diocesan seminary of San Cayetano. José María del Arco Ortiz, a native of Ciudad Rodrigo, spent twenty-five years collecting the pieces, and the museum opened in 2006, the year the Las Edades del Hombre exhibition came to the cathedral. The collection runs to more than 1,300 pieces from around the world.
Photo: Luis Rogelio HM — CC BY-SA 2.0 The square beside the cathedral is named for General Andrés Pérez de Herrasti, who led the Spanish defence of the city in the French siege of 1810 and gave in only when the French had opened a breach in the walls. The guerrilla leader Julián Sánchez, known as El Charro, rode out from the city with his horsemen during that siege, and on the night of 21 to 22 June 1810 he crossed the bridge over the Águeda with Herrasti's leave and broke through the French lines. His tomb is here, and his remains were brought to Ciudad Rodrigo in 1985.
Photo: Alta Falisa — CC BY-SA 4.0 The walls, begun under Ferdinand II of León in the 12th century, run for more than two kilometres, and the saw-toothed outer bastions were added later. This gate began as a small opening beside the cathedral and was called Santa María at least from the 14th century; in 1563 it was enlarged and became the Puerta Nueva, the New Gate. It takes its present name from the palace of the counts of Amayuelas that stood beside it, and another arch was opened alongside it in the mid-20th century to ease traffic.
Photo: Mr. Tickle — CC BY-SA 3.0 The licentiate Francisco Hernández de Ávila y Tiedra, mayor of the city in 1499, began this palace that year. Its style moves from Gothic towards Plateresque, and it was planned as a family house rather than a fortress. In 1524 his son sold the land in front of it to the city council on condition that nothing be built there, which is why the palace can still be seen in full from the square, and Wellington made it his headquarters when he came to the city in 1812.
Photo: Fernandezclara4 — CC BY-SA 4.0 Cardinal Francisco Pacheco de Toledo had this chapel built as a mausoleum for his family, close enough to cast a shadow over the cathedral, after the cathedral chapter refused to let him demolish part of the high chapel for a burial chapel in the apse like the Constables' Chapel in Burgos. Work began in 1585 with stone from Fuenteguinaldo and it was consecrated in 1685; unusually, the main nave runs north to south. During the War of Independence it served as a powder store, which exploded in 1818, and the lantern of its dome had to be rebuilt in 1889.
Photo: Mr. Tickle — CC BY-SA 3.0 The town hall on the Plaza Mayor is a 16th-century Renaissance building, and its right-hand wing was added in 1903. Few Roman remains survive in the city, and the best known are three columns of a temple; they have been the city's heraldic emblem since the Middle Ages.
Photo: Lancastermerrin88 — CC BY-SA 4.0 This is the gate on the east side of the city, which is where its name comes from. It originally had a tower, its vaults were rebuilt in the early 18th century, and after a period of closure it was reopened for good in the 19th century. The walls keep six gates today, and this is one of them.
Photo: GFreihalter — CC BY-SA 3.0 This church goes back to the 12th century, and a Romanesque-Mudéjar apse survives from that time. It was altered in the 16th, 18th and 20th centuries to hold the family burial chapels of the city's noble families, among them the Vázquez, who paid for the main chapel. A member of that family who returned from the Americas gave the parish a painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe by the Mexican painter Juan Correa.
Photo: Ziegler175 — CC BY-SA 3.0 The Puerta de Santiago, on the south side of the city, is named for an old parish church of Saint James that stood outside the walls. A restoration in 2002 uncovered old moats and barbicans; their outlines are marked on the pavement, and one moat was left open to see.
Photo: Concepcion AMAT ORTA… — CC BY 3.0 In 1479 twelve knights met in the church of the Order of Saint John on the Plaza Mayor to found a brotherhood to care for the poor and the sick, the Cofradía de la Sangre de Cristo or de la Pasión. In 1492 the Catholic Monarchs gave it the plots of the expelled Jews' yards and synagogue to build its hospital, which in the 16th century became the city's general hospital. Its treasures include a Hispano-Philippine ivory Virgen del Buen Suceso, given by Captain Pacheco Maldonado.
Photo: Luis Rogelio HM — CC BY-SA 2.0 Antonio del Águila, chief standard-bearer and castellan of the town's castle, was the patron of this Renaissance palace, which went up between the 16th and 17th centuries; Hernando de Güemes began the work. It is the biggest palace in Ciudad Rodrigo, filling a whole block with no building attached, and it has a garden, two inner courtyards and a private chapel. One courtyard is Plateresque, with arcades on three sides decorated with medallions and coats of arms, and since a restoration in 2000 the palace has housed the Hispano-Portuguese Centre and temporary exhibitions.
Photo: José Luis Filpo Cabana — CC BY-SA 4.0 The Puerta de la Colada faces south-west. From the 14th to the 16th century it was known as the Puerta de Águeda, by the middle of the 16th century it was already called the Puerta de la Colada, and that name settled in the 17th. The 17th-century local historian Sánchez Cabañas says it comes from the Colada stream, into which the city's water flowed through this gate.
Photo: GFreihalter — CC BY-SA 3.0 Ferdinand II of León ordered the first castle built over an earlier fortification of the town, and in 1372 King Enrique II, the first Trastámara king, had it rebuilt, hiring the Zamoran architect Lope Arias Jenízaro; a plaque over the entrance arch gives the date 1 June 1372. The keep is a square tower seventeen metres on a side, and an inner barrier was added in 1507. Outside it stands a pre-Roman stone boar, a relic of the Vettones, and the castle is now a Parador hotel.
Photo: Mr. Tickle — CC BY-SA 3.0
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