• Above: The Cathedral and old Roman bridge in Salamanca, 9 x 10″ or 22 x 25 cm., oil.

You may recall from my last post, that I was in Segovia, Spain and I began hiking the Camino Madrid. This overlapped with Easter week in 2024.

But so many things were closed in the small towns over Easter that I trouble getting food and lodging. So I took a break from the hike. I visited Valladolid and then spent the rest of Easter week in Salamanca.

Valladolid

Valladolid is a pleasant city and it has one outstanding attraction, the National Museum of Sculpture. I think I just spent two nights here.

This museum has a great collection of mostly religious sculptures. Often, poly-chrome wooden sculptures that have been removed from churches, but also a room of plaster casts.

Salamanca

When I started looking for a place to spend Easter a friend suggested Salamanca.

And Salamanca is a very nice place! I would say it’s one of my favorite cities in Spain.

It has a very pleasant town center, and a wonderful café and tapas culture. It was so nice to be out sketching where you could easily step into a bar and have a lovely glass of red wine and a generous tapas for a few euros.

I spent about a week in Salamanca. It was a bit cold and I had some drizzly days. It’s only in southern Spain that it’s warm in early spring.

And no blockbuster sites here. I didn’t even go into the cathedral. You can see it’s just a really pleasant place to live. It’s a university town and well known as a great place to do Spanish immersion courses.

I did see a terrific exhibit at the city run Sala de Exposiciones La Salina. It features high-quality local art. Which included this fun sculpture in the image above.

Palacio de Salinas

My favorite place to sketch in Salamanca was the Palacio de la Salina. I believe this building is government offices now, but in the past it was the local headquarters of the state salt monopoly.

When you walk in, the space of the patio is relatively small, but covered with small decorative sculptures. There were also places to stand and draw where I was sheltered from the regular drizzle the week I was there.

It seemed to be open to the public all the time. This might’ve been because it was Easter week, but it worked well for me.

Easter Processions

as I mentioned, I was in Salamanca during Easter week. So I was able to see several religious processions.

Easter is a more important holiday in Spain than the Christmas holidays in the US. This is the time when everybody travels to be with family.

Murals in Salamanca, Spain

There’s an active street mural culture in Salamanca. These were some of the ones I loved the most. Above is not the greatest photo, but this one with five stories of hair! What a great idea!

In the early 1900s portrait painter John Singer Sargent made it through Salamanca. He was a frequent visitor to Spain. The drawing above was most likely done as research for his Boston murals. Below is a contemporary picture of the fresco he drew from the Cathedral of Salamanca.

Salamanca is a true gem. It’s about 90 minutes from Madrid by train. And it’s a nice place to visit, and probably a nice place to live. I’m glad I got there.

After I left Salamanca, I did not return to the Camino Madrid. Instead, I took a train to southern France, where I spent 6 weeks hikeing the almost 500-mile (800 km) Camino Frances route of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage. I did some drawing while I was walking, and a lot more afterwards. I’m way behind on posting, but sometime in the next couple months, I’ll post an article about that.

Originally published on https://stephangiannini.com/