shewhomust (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shewhomust) wrote2011-10-01 10:35 pm
shewhomust) wrote2011-10-01 10:35 pm
The patron saint of highway engineers
After a couple of days playing truant from the Camino de Santiago to explore the vineyards of Rioja (more about this later), we have rejoined the pilgrim way at Santo Domingo de la Calzada, where we are staying in the second parador - and by some distance the grandest hotel - of our trip.
I had thought that the pilgrims had reached saturation point at Puente la Reina, where the different routes across the Pyrenees meet and pour their travelers in a single stream across the north of Spain. But Santo Domingo owes its existence to the pilgrimage, and doesn't forget it.
Domingo Garcia (Wikipedia entry) lived in the eleventh century and devoted his life to helping pilgrims on their way to Compotella, not by the usual charitable supply of food and shelter, but by improving the condition of the route - the calzada - itself, building first a wooden bridge, then a stone one, and paving the road surface. A settlement began to grow around his hermitage, and in time that became Santo Domingo de la Calzada. There can't be many towns whose involvement with the tourist economy is at once so ancient and so evident. And we are staying in a hospital (or hostel - I'm never sure, in the middle ages, how distinct these two things are) built for pilgrims in the twelfth century, and now a four star hotel run by the Spanish government - there's a fine sense of continuity in that!
We went out this evening to stroll round the town, thought we might as well look round the cathedral (of Santo Domingo, of course) and ended up spending so much of our time there. As well as the cathedral itself, with its elegant vaulting and some fine stonecarving, and all the richly decorated shrines, and the tomb of the saint himself (which is where this portrait comes from, showing him accompanied by the miraculous cock and hen), there is an exhibition of medieval polychrome statues which I found unexpectedly fascinating - and just when I thought we'd come to the end of that, we reached the Chapter House, with its painted ceiling and collection of treasure, case upon case of medieval bling. There was also a gothic arch, gated with iron bars behind which a piano lurked in a niche - presumably a piano which needs to be caged is even more dangerous than a book which must be chained).
All the time we were in the exhibition we kept hearing sirens, and half expected that we would emerge to find the town up in flames: but eventually we found the funfair where the local police were offering the kids motorcycle rides round a marked course, sirens sounding and lights flashing.
I had thought that the pilgrims had reached saturation point at Puente la Reina, where the different routes across the Pyrenees meet and pour their travelers in a single stream across the north of Spain. But Santo Domingo owes its existence to the pilgrimage, and doesn't forget it.
Domingo Garcia (Wikipedia entry) lived in the eleventh century and devoted his life to helping pilgrims on their way to Compotella, not by the usual charitable supply of food and shelter, but by improving the condition of the route - the calzada - itself, building first a wooden bridge, then a stone one, and paving the road surface. A settlement began to grow around his hermitage, and in time that became Santo Domingo de la Calzada. There can't be many towns whose involvement with the tourist economy is at once so ancient and so evident. And we are staying in a hospital (or hostel - I'm never sure, in the middle ages, how distinct these two things are) built for pilgrims in the twelfth century, and now a four star hotel run by the Spanish government - there's a fine sense of continuity in that!
We went out this evening to stroll round the town, thought we might as well look round the cathedral (of Santo Domingo, of course) and ended up spending so much of our time there. As well as the cathedral itself, with its elegant vaulting and some fine stonecarving, and all the richly decorated shrines, and the tomb of the saint himself (which is where this portrait comes from, showing him accompanied by the miraculous cock and hen), there is an exhibition of medieval polychrome statues which I found unexpectedly fascinating - and just when I thought we'd come to the end of that, we reached the Chapter House, with its painted ceiling and collection of treasure, case upon case of medieval bling. There was also a gothic arch, gated with iron bars behind which a piano lurked in a niche - presumably a piano which needs to be caged is even more dangerous than a book which must be chained).
All the time we were in the exhibition we kept hearing sirens, and half expected that we would emerge to find the town up in flames: but eventually we found the funfair where the local police were offering the kids motorcycle rides round a marked course, sirens sounding and lights flashing.