Sight Name: Plaza Mayor
Sight Pic: index.php?module=Photoshare&type=show&func=viewimage&iid=219
Intro: Salamanca's Plaza Mayor is considered the most perfect square in Spain architecturally, and is still in many ways "the living, beating heart of the city." Its porticos give shade and shelter to shops and pavement cafés, there is a permanent to-and-fro of people around and across it, and you have not seen Salamanca properly until you have paused there at more than one hour of the day.
Body of the text: The Plaza Mayor was built on the site of the much larger Plaza de San Martín, which must have been something like Marrakesh's Jemaa El Fnaa, broad and open and where everything communal in the city took place at the same time: markets, celebrations, executions, bullfights and so on. The Baroque Plaza Mayor was begun in 1724, was finished in 1755, and was the greatest work of Spanish architect Alberto Churriguera, though he died five years before before its completion by Andrés García de Quiñones. The latter was on the whole faithful to Churrigera's design, but did not have the courage to place the two lateral towers which should have finished off the Casas Consistoriales, city hall, so this is still technically incomplete.

Eighteenth-century Spanish plaza mayors follow a similar plan, and it is interesting to consider that in those days they would have been modern, functional affairs, difficult to tell apart, like today's airports and shopping centres. The buildings forming the sides of the square are called pavilions, and the one with the Casas Consistoriales (you'll recognise it by the flags and so forth) is the Pabellón del Ayuntamiento, the presence here of the town hall being what defines a plaza mayor as opposed to any other square.

Even though not exactly square, Salamanca's Plaza Mayor is distinguished by its perfection (others, like Madrid's, are slightly marred by rebuilding or modifications). It has 88 arches and the same number of columns (or the other way round), in between which there are medallions, mostly showing carved busts. Not many of the ones on the Pabellón del Ayuntamiento have been finished, but those on the Royal Pavilion to the right show Spanish monarchs and heads of state, those on the Pabellón de San Martín opposite the town hall show illustrious Spaniards like Hernán Cortés, while those on the Pabellón de Petrineros to the left of the town hall show famous cultural or religious figures like Cervantes and Saint Teresa.

Nearby: A little to the south of the Plaza Mayor you find the Plaza del Corrillo, and a little to the north the Plaza de los Bandos. Both names refer to a period in Salamanca's history called Las Guerras de los Bandos, the Gang Wars, in the 15th century. Rival groups of families, the San Benito gang and the San Tomé gang, fought for control of the city over a period of about 40 years, counting from an incident involving the Monroy family (on the San Benito side) and the Manzano family (Santo Tomé). Doña Maria de Monroy pursued the slayers of her children (there had been a dispute over a game of pelota) to Portugal, where her men killed and decapitated the Manzanos. She took the heads back to Salamanca and placed them on the graves of her sons. The house of María la Brava, as she was called by the understandably fearful citixens of Salamanca, stands in the Plaza de los Bandos. The Plaza del Corrillo, originally the Plaza del Corrillo de la Hierba ("Chatting-Grass Square"), was so called because it was a no-man's land where no-one dared tread between the gangs' territories, with the consequent growth of herbiage.
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