Vitoria-Gasteiz: up the medieval Almendra to the Old Cathedral: a self-guided walk

By Alleytale

The medieval Almendra up to the cathedral

The old town climbs its hill in the shape of an almond, and each stop shows what held it together: an oath sworn on a machete, a fortress that became a church, a merchant's house that sheltered a future pope, the palaces and tower houses of its noble families, and the church and towers built into its walls.

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The stops

1. 1Andre Maria Zuriaren plaza

   In the Middle Ages this square was Vitoria's centre, with its food markets and bullfights on open ground outside the south wall of the old town above it. That old town is the medieval Almendra, the almond, which took shape when Correría, Zapatería and Herrería streets were laid out in the early 13th century, followed in 1256 by Cuchillería, Pintorería and Judería. In the middle of the square stands the monument to the Battle of Vitoria of 1813, put up in 1917.

   

2. 2San Migel Goiaingeruaren eliza

   San Miguel went up in the late 14th century on the south slope of the hill, outside the walls of the first Vitoria, very probably on the site of the oath church of the same name that King Sancho VI of Navarre's founding charter of 1181 mentions. Between the two arches of its porch, a Gothic stone Virgin painted in colour stands in an 18th-century marble niche: she is the Virgen Blanca, the city's patron, who gives the square her name. At her festival a doll called Celedón slides down a wire from the top of the church to a balcony across the square, which starts the celebrations.

   

3. 3Aihotz plaza

   The city's rulers once swore here to keep its laws with a machete before them, on pain of death if they failed, and the barred niche in the apse of San Miguel where the machete was kept can still be seen. The square was called the Plaza de los Bueyes, after the beef market that stood here, until it took its present name in 1806. A plaque of 1920 records the oath the city's procurator-syndic used to swear, and the original machete now lies in the Municipal Archive, with a replica in the square.

   

4. 4San Bizente eliza

   This church was built on one of the fortresses of Sancho VI's Vitoria, which the Catholic Monarchs handed to the city council in 1484. In the feuds between the Calleja and Ayala factions the old castle changed hands, and one Christmas night in the 15th century Juan de Salinas, who served the count of Treviño, stormed it back from the Calleja and returned it to the city. The Salinas family took a tower and a ladder as their arms in memory of it, and you can see them on the back door of the nearby Palacio de Villa Suso.

   

5. 5Kordoi Etxea

   The converso merchant Juan Sánchez de Bilbao built this house in the 15th century around the 13th-century tower of the Gaona family, which still stands inside its first two floors. It is named for the Franciscan cord on the arch of one of its twin entrances. In January 1522 Adrian of Utrecht, then regent of Spain, was lodging here when word reached him that he had been elected pope; he stayed in Vitoria a little over a month.

   

6. 6Bendaña jauregia

   Juan López de Arrieta ordered this palace built in 1525 on the site of the medieval tower of the Maestu family, and work went on until about 1560. The cylindrical tower on its facade was a show of its owners' standing, the courtyard has three floors of open arched galleries in full Renaissance style, and the pointed-arch door on Calle Cuchillería is late Gothic. Since 1994 it has been home to the Fournier Museum of Playing Cards, which grew from a collection that Félix Alfaro Fournier began in 1916.

   

7. 7Eskoriatza Eskibel jauregia

   Fernán López de Escoriaza, chief physician first to Henry VIII of England and then to Charles V, and his wife Victoria Pérez de Anda y Esquivel asked the city for a plot at the top of the town in late 1539 and began this palace; both died in 1541, a few months apart. Built over a stretch of the medieval wall, it is the best-preserved Renaissance palace in Vitoria, and on its doorway the portraits of husband and wife share the same level. In 1774 the newly founded Bascongada Society of Friends of the Country rented it and opened the city's free drawing school in some of its rooms.

   

8. 8San Pedro eliza

   A fortress church beside the city walls, mostly 14th century and possibly begun a little earlier, San Pedro had the old wall running along its west end, which is why that end is walled up. It is considered one of the most beautiful Gothic churches in northern Spain, for the purity of its interior and the richness of its sculpture. The Baroque tower came later, the neo-Gothic south porch was added in the 1890s, and the stained glass was made in Bordeaux.

   

9. 9Otxanda Andrearen dorrea

   This 15th-century fortified house guarded the Portal de Aldabe, a gate in the western wall. In the 16th century Catalina de Álava Esquibel and Andrés Martínez de Iruña turned it into a town palace, and it takes its name from their daughter, Doña Ochanda de Iruña y Álava. The crown of overhanging battlements at the top comes from a restoration of 1969 to 1971, and in 1986 the tower opened as the Natural Sciences Museum of Álava.

   

10. 10Ahate Iturria

    People call this the Fountain of the Ducks, but the figures that decorate it are really swans. The present design dates from 1831, by the architect Francisco Echanove y Guinea, though the fountain goes back to a 16th-century original, and it is one of only two historic fountains left in the old town. It has been moved many times, to the Plaza de los Fueros, the Florida park and the entrance of Calle Cuchillería among other places, before settling for good in its original little square, which has carried its name since 1973.

    

11. 11Hurtado de Andatarren dorrea

    The tower takes its name from the Hurtado de Anda, hidalgos from the Cuartango valley who married their way into Vitoria's lesser nobility in the 15th century. Built at the end of that century, it was one of the towers that defended the north wall at the Portal de Arriaga, behind the cathedral, and it is among the oldest buildings still standing in the city. Beside its pointed-arch entrance a small arrow slit is the only original opening, and above the stone base the walls are timber-framed with a gallery of round arches, in a square named for the burulleros, the cloth weavers who once traded there.

    

12. 12Santa Maria katedrala

    The cathedral stands at the top of the hill where King Sancho VI of Navarre founded Nova Victoria in 1181 over the old village of Gasteiz, and this fortress-like church, begun in the 13th century, formed part of the town's defences. It is called the Old Cathedral because it became a cathedral only in the 19th century, after the diocese of Vitoria was created in 1861. A fallen piece of vault closed it in 1994, and the restoration that followed was run under the motto Abierto por obras, open for works, so that visitors could see the repairs while they were under way.

    

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