Spain – UNESCO World Heritage Sites

My visit to and post about Alcalá de Henares and the forty-four UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Spain (Second highest to Italy at forty-seven) made me stop and think about the comparison with the list that I reviewed recently of the “Twelve Treasures of the Kingdom of Spain” which was a contest/poll that was conducted by the Spanish Television Company Antena 3 and the radio broadcaster Cope.

I have set out the full list of World Heritage Sites below including links to the twenty-one that I have visited.  The sites are spread across the entire Iberian Peninsula but of the Autonomous Communities, Catalonia, at a crossroads of European culture, and Castilla y Leon, the largest by area, have the most with six sites each.  Aragon, Asturias, Basque Country, La Rioja and Murcia have only one each but of all seventeen regions Navarre in the north of the country is the only one that doesn’t have any at all.  As well as the indignity of having no World Heritage sites poor old Navarre doesn’t have a coastline, no international airport or a direct link to the Spanish high speed rail infrastructure.  Maybe the city of Pamplona needs to start working on a bid to UNESCO for the next round of qualifying.

The full list is:

Alhambra, Generalife and Albayzín, Granada (1984)

Aranjuez Cultural Landscape (2001)

Archaeological Ensemble of Mérida (1993)

Archaeological Ensemble of Tárraco (2000)

Archaeological Site of Atapuerca (2000)

Burgos Cathedral (1984)

Cantabrian Cave of Altamira

Catalan Romanesque Churches of the Vall de Boí (2000)

Cathedral, Alcázar and Archivo de Indias, Seville (1987)

Cultural Landscape of the Serra de Tramuntana (2011)

Doñana National Park (1994)

El Escorial Monastery and Site of the Escurial, (1984)

Garajonay National Park (1986)

Heritage of Mercury. Almadén and Idrija (2012)

Historic Centre of Cordoba (1984)

Historic City of Toledo (1986)

Historic Walled Town of Cuenca (1996)

Ibiza, Biodiversity and Culture (1999)

La Lonja de la Seda de Valencia (1996)

Las Médulas (1997)

Monuments of Oviedo and Kingdom of the Asturias (1985)

Mudejar Architecture of Aragon (1986)

Old City of Salamanca (1988)

Old Town of Ávila with its Extra-Muros Churches (1985)

Old Town of Cáceres (1986)

Old Town of Segovia and its Aqueduct (1985)

Palau de la Música Catalana and Hospital de Sant Pau, Barcelona (1997)

Palmeral of Elche (2000)

Poblet Monastery (1991)

Prehistoric Rock Art Sites in the Côa Valley and Siega Verde (1998)

Pyrénées – Mont Perdu (1997)

Renaissance Monumental Ensembles of Úbeda and Baeza (2003)

Rock Art of the Mediterranean Basin on the Iberian Peninsula (1998)

Roman Walls of Lugo (2000)

Route of Santiago de Compostela (1993)

Royal Monastery of Santa María de Guadalupe (1993)

San Cristóbal de La Laguna (1999)

San Millán Yuso and Suso Monasteries (1997)

Santiago de Compostela (Old Town) (1985)

Teide National Park (2007)

Tower of Hercules (2009)

University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá de Henares (1998)

Vizcaya Bridge (2006)

Works of Antoni Gaudí (1984)

Like UNESCO, the “Twelve Treasures of the Kingdom of Spain” didn’t include any entries from Navarre but had the most (three) from Andalusia.  Interestingly it only included four World Heritage Sites in its list, Cordoba, Seville, Altamira Caves and Santiago de Compostela.

In response to the official list of winners I produced my own alternative list, six of which shared a place on the UNESCO list, Salamanca, Avila, Cuenca, Aranjuez, El Escorial and the works of Antoni Gaudi but also like UNESCO and the Spanish TV viewers I didn’t include anywhere in Navarre.

Can I interest anyone else in compiling a list?

Weekly Photo Challenge: UP

Trogir, Croatia and the Tower of Terror!

The first third of the climb was straightforward and uneventful up the sort of staircase that we have negotiated many times but then the stone staircase stopped abruptly at a first level and the next part of the climb was up a set of precarious wooden steps that had a handrail but nothing else to prevent a careless visitor falling through and ending up in a tangle of broken bones on the stone floor at the bottom of the tower.

Worse than that was the prospect of slipping and falling the other way which would have involved a fall through an open stone window and onto the court yard below with little real prospect of survival.  During the fatal fall however there would have been some excellent views because the higher the steps climbed the view over the roof tops towards the sea on one side and the mountains on the other got better and better.

This was more like the Tower of Terror than the Tower of Trogir.  At the top of the hazardous wooden stairs was a second level where the bells were and then some even more dangerous iron stairs to negotiate to complete the climb to the very top of the tower which involved a struggle through a small opening without any handrails at all and which opened out into the final level where there was time to enjoy the spectacular views and to contemplate and reflect on just how perilous this climb was and to worry about getting back down again.

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Alternative Twelve Treasures of Spain – Salamanca

The “Twelve Treasures of the Kingdom of Spain” was a contest/poll that was conducted by the Spanish Television Company Antena 3 and the radio broadcaster Cope. The final results were announced on 31^st December 2007.  I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the eight out of the twelve that I have visited and having completed that I thought I might come up with a personal alternative twelve.

The official winning twelve included five Cathedrals, but I have only one – at number eleven – Salamanca.

Salamanca is one of the most magnificent Renaissance cities in all of Europe.  It was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988 and a European City of Culture in 2002.  Sandstone coloured buildings overwhelmingly fill the city, earning Salamanca the name of La Ciudad Dorada (The Golden City).

We arrived  just after midday, easily slipped into an underground car park and made our way into the city.  On every visit to Spain I seem to be visiting a new World Heritage Site so when I counted them up I was interested to discover that I have now been to sixteen and that is over a third of them.

In 2005 I visited Barcelona in Catalonia and saw the works of Antoni Gaudi and Palau de la Música Catalana and the Hospital de Sant Pau. Then in 2008 I saw the Historic Centre of Córdoba,  the  Caves of Altamira in Cantabria, the Old Town of Santiago de Compostela and the Cathedral, Alcázar and Archivo de Indias in Seville.  In 2009 in the motoring holiday around Castilian cities I visited the Old Town of Segovia and its Aqueduct, the Historic Walled Town of Cuenca, the Historic City of Toledo and the Old Town of Ávila.

It was still misty even though the sun was struggling to break through as we walked through cobbled streets and buildings of rich caramel coloured Villamayor stone and directly to the centre of the city.  Then around the busy  University buildings and visited the public library and after that the centre of the city and the inevitable Plaza Mayor where because it was too chilly to sit at a pavement café groups of men were wandering around deep in conversation discussing the important matters of the day.

Elderly men are a way of life in Spain because just as Gerald Brenan explained in ‘South from Granada’ “…almost every Spanish peasant becomes wise when he passes fifty.”

It was a good Plaza, but despite being the second largest in Spain after Madrid with vast  harmonious arcaded space designed by Alberto Churriguera in the eighteenth century we did not consider it one of our favourites, but still worth a visit and when we had finished admiring it we left through a stone arch and looked for a bar and somewhere for lunch and we found what we were looking for just outside the square so stopped for tapas and a beer.

It was easy to conclude that there is something special about Salamanca almost as though in every street, with every building and in every Church and Palace that this represents the real Spain that we have been searching for and this may well be because it has the oldest University in Spain which rivals in historic importance that of Oxford and Bologna and houses one of the oldest libraries in the World and is considered to be the source of the ‘pure‘ Spanish language and associated culture of Old Castile.

As we ate an optimistic old lady passed by selling sprigs of rosemary and I didn’t know why until later when I looked it up.  Rosemary, apparently, is widely thought to be a powerful guardian and to give power to women and therefore it is used by many people to ward off evil in the home and bring good luck in family matters. If I had known this at the time I might have bought some to see if it might improve the weather because the mist wasn’t shifting when we left and went to visit the cathedral.

I should say cathedrals because Salamanca has two, an old one and a new one that are joined together into one massive structure.  We paid €3.50 each for tickets to visit and then commenced a tour of the towers and the balconies that involved an awful lot of spiral staircases and a labyrinth of stone corridors took us from one to the other.  It was a spectacular building and well worth the money but it was a pity about the weather because the drab overcast sky and persistent patches of mist spoilt what would certainly have been spectacular views from the top.

After the visit we returned to the streets and walked to the 1^st Century Roman Bridge across the River Tormes, which was flowing west towards the Embalse de Almendra that we had visited yesterday and then with no real prospect of weather improvement we abandoned Salamanca to the mist and returned to the car and set out for Vallodolid.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Lost in the Detail

Giant’s Causeway, Northern Ireland:

“O, it is excellent to have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant”                                                                                                                                          William Shakespeare, ‘Measure for Measure’

When I visited Northern Island I knew that there was one special place that I had to see while I was there: The Giant’s Causeway in County Antrim on the north-east coast.

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Twelve Treasures of Spain – Roman Theatre at Mérida

The “Twelve Treasures of the Kingdom of Spain” was a contest/poll that was conducted by the Spanish Television Company Antena 3 and the radio broadcaster Cope. The final results were announced on 31^st December 2007.  I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the eight out of the twelve that I have visited.  Eighth in the competition was the Roman Theatre at Mérida in Extremadura.

Extremadura is considered to be the traditional boundary between Moorish and Christian Spain and Mérida itself has previously passed between Christian, Moorish, and even Portuguese control.  Because of its rich and varied history it was declared a UNESCO World heritage site in 1993.

On our visit to the city we walked first along a busy main road towards the crimson and saffron coloured Plaza de Torres where tattered bull fight advertising posters were peeling from the pot-marked walls and near here was our first excavation to visit.  We bought an all sites pass for €12 each which seemed like a good deal and went inside to see the remains of a house that had been the home and office of an important Roman citizen in the first century A.D. and after that we visited an adjacent ancient Roman burial site and cemetery.

It was getting hot as we made our way to one of the main attractions, the amphitheatre and theatre and as we walked we were aware of hundreds of school children arriving in buses, far too many for this to be a normal school trip occasion and we wondered what they were all doing here.  We found the entrance to the site and all was revealed because today, and all week, there was a production of the Greco-Latin Youth Festival Theatre which meant that the theatre was in use and access was restricted.  I was annoyed about that and wondered just how restricted?

We went first to the amphitheatre which was completed in 8 B.C. and was able to seat up to fifteen thousand spectators within the elliptical stadium.  The previous month we had visited the amphitheatre at Pula which accommodated twenty-thousand spectators but this seemed just as huge.  It wasn’t in such good shape however because a lot of it has been subsequently dismantled for alternative building projects, some of it as far away as Cordoba in the east.

Mérida was the capital city of the most westerly Roman Province of Lusitania so this was an important place and the amphitheatre here would have been on the main gladiatorial and events circuit of the Empire and it continued to be used for this purpose until the fourth century.  Today, on account of its past, Mérida is a sister city of Rome.

The site was beginning to fill up now with chattering school children and the volume levels inside the Roman Theatre (Teatro Romano) were beginning to build so we left the amphitheatre and walked the short distance to the theatre next door.  Two thousand years ago this would have been a massive entertainment centre for the city and today we were going to see it being used once more for its original purpose.

Although we couldn’t get down close to the stage area and the columns and the statues and the central seating area was full of excitable school children we could make our way around the upper circle and visitors were invited to stay awhile and watch the production.  We sat and watched for about half an hour but it was a three hour show and struggling with interpretation we finally left and moved on.

And next I have to move on straight to number ten in the competition and leave out number nine because I have never visited the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia and to be honest – probably never will!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Unique

Giant’s Causeway Northern Ireland

When I visited Northern Island I knew that there was one special place that I had to see while I was there: The Giant’s Causeway in County Antrim on the north-east coast.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Changing Seasons

Autumn and the Canal du Midi

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”                                    Albert Camus

It wasn’t too busy today with just a few visitors and a handful of barges waiting patiently for the next scheduled operation of the locks.  It was quite interesting but I have to say that if this is the third most visited tourist attraction in Languedoc-Roussillon then the region must be short of visitor attractions and I’m not sure that I believe that claim.  From the top lock there was a glorious view across the river valley towards Beziers but we turned our back on that and continued to walk along the tree lined canal where two-hundred year old Plane trees with decorative mottled bark lean across the water, their heavy foliage forming an impenetrable canopy of heavily dappled olive-green shade.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Reflections

Canal du Midi, Languedoc, France

The trees have been a feature of the eastern half of the canal from Toulouse to Sète since they were first planted in the 1830s and today, as we walked along the towpath, all around us they swayed gently in the breeze as though in a collective trance.  Their triple purpose was to strengthen the banks, reduce water evaporation by the strong Midi sun and shade the canal boats, which originally transported delicate products like wine and fabrics.  But in 2005 disaster struck and for the past six years a fungus has been attacking the trees, spreading along the waterway and defying all attempts to cure or control it.

Tree specialists have concluded that it is almost certain all the planes will have to be chopped down, burned and replaced because the trees have been struck by an outbreak of a virulent, incurable microscopic fungus which spreads through the roots and is thought to have first reached France with American GIs in the Second-World-War whose sycamore ammunition boxes were infected.

We counted ourselves lucky to have seen these magnificent trees at this time because in a couple of years or so they may well be gone.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Green

Canal du Midi, Languedoc, France

The trees have been a feature of the eastern half of the canal from Toulouse to Sète since they were first planted in the 1830s and today, as we walked along the towpath, all around us they swayed gently in the breeze as though in a collective trance.  Their triple purpose was to strengthen the banks, reduce water evaporation by the strong Midi sun and shade the canal boats, which originally transported delicate products like wine and fabrics.  But in 2005 disaster struck and for the past six years a fungus has been attacking the trees, spreading along the waterway and defying all attempts to cure or control it.

Tree specialists have concluded that it is almost certain all the planes will have to be chopped down, burned and replaced because the trees have been struck by an outbreak of a virulent, incurable microscopic fungus which spreads through the roots and is thought to have first reached France with American GIs in the Second-World-War whose sycamore ammunition boxes were infected.

We counted ourselves lucky to have seen these magnificent trees at this time because in a couple of years or so they may well be gone.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Mine

The Wieliczka Salt Mine, Krakow, Poland

Well, it means something special to me…

The mine is a tourist attraction and about one million, two hundred thousand people visit every year.  This might seem like a strange sort of place to visit but the attraction is a collection of statues and an entire cathedral that have been carved out of the rock salt by the miners over the years – presumably during their tea breaks.  So impressive are the sculptures that in 1978 the Wieliczka salt mine was placed on the original UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.

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