Santiago was a Roman burial ground before it was a shrine. Follow the layers: a 9th-century tomb, Master Mateo's carved Romanesque portal, Fonseca's Renaissance university, and Galicia's museums of land, sea and stone.
Three floors tracing how a Roman-era cemetery became Christendom's third pilgrimage. Medieval reliquaries, pilgrim badges, Camino maps and Jacobean iconography. Open Tue–Fri 09:30–20:30, Sat 11:00–19:30, Sun 10:15–14:45.
Master Mateo's 1188 Romanesque portal, restored 2018 after a decade of work that revealed its original polychrome pigments. 200 figures, the Tree of Jesse column, and the smiling prophet Daniel. Timed-entry only.
Galicia's second-largest monastery, Benedictine from 899, rebuilt in monumental Baroque 1590–1652. The retable altar is a wall of gilded wood; the sacristy and the sunken façade (the square rose around it) show how the city buried its own ground level.
A 1136 Romanesque collegiate church whose columns lean outward at an alarming angle — a foundation failure, not a design. Buttresses were added in the 18th century. The cloister fragments are attributed to Master Mateo's workshop.
The university's 1522 birthplace, founded by Archbishop Alonso III de Fonseca. Plateresque façade, Renaissance cloister and a library holding incunabula. The USC is one of Spain's oldest, running continuously for five centuries.
Founded by Francis of Assisi himself as a pilgrim in 1214, per tradition. Rebuilt in the 18th century; the Holy Land museum below holds archaeological finds from Franciscan excavations in Palestine and Israel.
The 12th-century archbishop's palace built by Diego Xelmírez, the man who made Compostela an archbishopric and forged documents to prove it. The banqueting hall's corbels carve a medieval wedding feast — musicians, cooks, diners — in stone.
Laid out in 1546 on land donated by the cathedral, redesigned as a bourgeois promenade in the 19th century. The Marías statues commemorate two sisters who defied Francoist ostracism by parading daily; their brothers were anarchists.
Galician ethnography inside a 14th-century Dominican convent. The triple helical staircase — three independent spirals to one roof — is a 17th-century engineering showpiece by Domingo de Andrade.
The convent church holds the tombs of Rosalía de Castro, Castelao and Alfredo Brañas — icons of Galician nationalism. The park behind was the convent's cemetery; carved gravestones still stand among the oaks.
The final approach of the Camino Francés. Pilgrims entered through Porta do Camiño, one of the seven medieval gates; San Pedro's narrow street of 18th-century workers' houses was the first city they saw after weeks of walking.
The medieval market square and site of the old town hall, where the city's council met from the 13th century. The Casa do Cabido (1758) is a pure façade — three metres deep, built solely as stage scenery for the square.