Salamanca's history is written in Villamayor sandstone: a Roman bridge crossing the Tormes, a 12th-century Romanesque cathedral swallowed by a Gothic one, and lecture halls where Fray Luis de León resumed class after five years in the Inquisition's cells.
Fifteen of the 26 arches date to the 1st century AD Vía de la Plata, the Roman road from Mérida to Astorga; the rest were rebuilt after the 1626 Tormes flood. At the city end squats a granite verraco, a pre-Roman Vettone boar carved before Rome arrived.
Housed in a 1503 Plateresque physician's mansion, the archaeology floor holds Vettone stelae, Roman milestones from the Vía de la Plata and Visigothic buckles excavated in the province. Open Tue-Sat 10:00-14:00 and 17:00-20:00, Sun mornings only.
A rare circular Romanesque church begun around 1178 just inside the medieval Puerta de Zamora, with three parallel naves under one round roof and 15th-century murals of Saint Anthony. It sat beside the wall guarding the northern approach to the city.
The 1480 Torre del Clavero is the last survivor of the fortified tower-houses built by feuding noble clans during the bandos wars that tore medieval Salamanca apart; eight octagonal turrets crown it. The 1539 Palacio de Monterrey stands five minutes north.
The 16th-century lecture hall keeps its original rough benches and canopied pulpit. Fray Luis returned here in 1576 after five years in Inquisition cells and reputedly opened with 'Decíamos ayer' — as we were saying yesterday. Entry includes the cloister and Cielo de Salamanca.
The rector's residence beside the university preserves Miguel de Unamuno's library and papercraft birds. From here he walked to the 12 October 1936 ceremony where he faced Millán-Astray's 'Death to intelligence!' and answered that Franco's men would conquer but not convince.
Franco's regime moved its seized Republican, Masonic and trade-union archives into this palace on Calle Gibraltar; it now holds the reconstructed Masonic lodge chamber and millions of confiscated documents used for repression files after 1937.
The 1760 neoclassical palace faces the New Cathedral and served as the Nationalist headquarters when Salamanca was Franco's capital in 1937; the Bishop's Palace nearby housed his residence. The colonnade is one of the city's few non-Baroque facades.
Dominican friars here debated Columbus's westward plan in 1486 and later Francisco de Vitoria taught the Salamanca School's arguments on the rights of American peoples — early international law. The Churrigueresque altarpiece dates to 1693.
Excavations on this hill above the Tormes exposed Iron Age huts from the 7th century BC — Salamanca's original settlement, older than the Roman town. Below it, surviving stretches of the 12th-century wall skirt the barrio where the aljama lived until 1492.
A 1533 irregular pentagonal cloister whose capitals carry grotesque carvings — harpies, skulls, a man devoured by a serpent — attributed to the sculptor Juan de Álava's workshop. Dominican nuns still sell almond sweets at the turntable inside the entrance.
The crypt of the vanished San Cebrián church is where legend placed the devil's school of black arts, teaching seven students for seven years and keeping one soul as payment — the tale Cervantes and Ruiz de Alarcón both retold. Free, small, near the Roman wall remnant.