Santiago de Compostela: the pilgrim's last mile: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
The pilgrim's last mile to the apostle's tomb
Pilgrims have walked this last stretch for centuries, and much of what stands along it, from the gate and the churches to the market square and the street of the jet workers, grew up around people arriving on foot.
The stops
This church stands outside the old walled city, at the entrance of the French Way, the main pilgrim road to Santiago. The present building is an 18th-century neoclassical church that keeps some remains of the 12th-century Benedictine monastery of San Pedro de Fóra. Burials found in its atrium are most likely those of monks and pilgrims from the 12th to the 15th centuries, because the monastery lodged pilgrims long before the Hostal dos Reis Católicos was built in the 16th century.
Photo: August Dominus — CC0 This was the first gate through which pilgrims on the French Way entered the walled city of Santiago, and an arch here once formed one of the city's seven entrances. From the square you can see the Convent of San Domingos de Bonaval, home of the Museo do Pobo Galego since 1963. In the square stands the Cruceiro do Home Santo, whose Gothic cross some authors link to the death of a man named Xan Tuorum and others to a pilgrimage made by Vicente Ferrer in 1412.
Photo: Reservas de Coches — CC BY 2.0 A marker from the Xunta de Galicia calls this the first church inside the walls that pilgrims on the French Way visit. The present church is 18th-century work by Miguel Ferro Caaveiro that replaced an earlier Romanesque one, and it keeps a 15th-century tympanum of the Epiphany and a 16th-century chapel of the Counts of Amarante. Its highlights include the slender neoclassical Immaculate by Manuel Prado Mariño, shown treading on the serpent.
Photo: juantiagues — CC BY-SA 2.0 Look above the door: a relief shows the souls of Purgatory standing in flames. Work on this neoclassical chapel began in April 1784 to a design by Miguel Ferro Caaveiro and was paid for with alms from devotees of the souls in purgatory. It was consecrated in 1788, but the façade had to wait until about 1800, when the brotherhood bought and pulled down a block of houses that hid it.
Photo: Cosal — CC BY-SA 4.0 This square was first called Praza do Campo, by about the 12th century it was known as Praza do Foro, and later it became Praza do Pan. In the Middle Ages the city market was held here, and the official crier read out the archbishop's and the council's ordinances. The town hall stood here until 1782, and the small church of San Bieito do Campo still stands on the square. Its present name comes from the monument to Miguel de Cervantes over the fountain.
Photo: Simon Burchell — CC BY-SA 4.0 The square was laid out around 1611 over the medieval cemetery called Quintana de Mortos, and a staircase still divides the lower Quintana de Mortos, the Quintana of the dead, from the upper Quintana de Vivos, the Quintana of the living. In a Holy Year, when 25 July falls on a Sunday, pilgrims cross it to enter the basilica by the Holy Door and earn a plenary indulgence granted by Pope Alexander III in 1179. A plaque on the wall of the Antealtares convent remembers the Literary Battalion that university students formed in 1808 to defend Galicia against Napoleon's troops.
Photo: Bene Riobó — CC BY-SA 4.0 This is the last street pilgrims cross before reaching the cathedral, whether they come by the French, Primitive, Northern or English Way. It was once Rúa da Moeda, or of the Cambeas, for its many money-changers, and in the 15th century it took its present name from the guild of acibecheiros, the jet workers, whose shops lined it. At its start Archbishop Xelmírez built a new hospital for the poor and pilgrims, later the Colexio de San Xerome, and when it was pulled down in 1652 only its late-Gothic doorway of 1491 survived.
Photo: Castelao — Public domain The cathedral's Acibechería façade, a Baroque work by Ferro Caaveiro and Fernández Sarela later modified by Ventura Rodríguez, looks onto this square. Opposite stands the monastery of San Martiño Pinario, built around 899 and later the second largest monastery in Spain after El Escorial. Its church towers stop at the height of the façade because the cathedral chapter opposed anything taller, afraid the basilica would lose its visibility.
Photo: José Luis Filpo Cabana — CC BY 3.0 This is the reputed burial place of Saint James the Great and the traditional end of the pilgrimage route. According to legend, Pelagius the Hermit rediscovered the tomb in the year 814 after seeing strange lights in the sky over the Libredon forest. Almanzor burned the earlier church in 997 but left the tomb undisturbed, and work on the present Romanesque cathedral began in 1075, with Gothic and Baroque additions later.
Photo: C messier — CC BY-SA 4.0 The Catholic Monarchs had this built as a hostelry and hospital for pilgrims at the very end of the Camino, and construction began in 1501. Pilgrims were cared for free of charge, for three days in summer and five in winter. It kept that role for four centuries, reopened as a hotel in 1954, and still gives free services to a limited number of pilgrims every day.
Photo: C messier — CC BY-SA 4.0 Obradoiro means workshop, a name that recalls the stonemasons who worked here while the cathedral was built. Four buildings frame the square and stand for the pillars of the city: the cathedral for religion, the Hostal dos Reis Católicos for care of the pilgrim, the Pazo de Raxoi for government and the Colexio de San Xerome for the university. A plaque at the centre of the floor marks the Camino de Santiago, which ends here for most pilgrims, who then enter the cathedral through the Pórtico da Gloria.
Photo: Laszlo Daroczy from Miskolc, Hungary — CC BY 2.0
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