A Class Act in Salamanca

My wife and I were frog hunting at dawn. Not for just any frog--for the frog.

“There. There it is.”

“Where?”

“Down there in the corner, I think. See its legs?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

Janice and I were not in a swamp but at Salamanca University, the oldest university in Spain, dating to the early 13th century. If you think Harvard, founded in 1636, is old, consider that Christopher Columbus used to come to Salamanca to run his ideas past its faculty. The university was founded in 1218 by Alfonso IX of Leon, who combined several existing schools into one institution.

Somewhere up among the cherubs and two-headed eagles in the intricate design of the 16th century facade is the image of a frog. Legend says that those who can see it will be lucky in their exams and married within a year.

We came here to learn (although not in formal classes), but we would have no exams. We’ve been married for 32 years, so marriage wasn’t a concern. And we were in Salamanca, so how much luckier could we be?

In a way, Salamanca is like that frog. It’s not that Spain has hidden Salamanca; it’s just that the city often gets overlooked in favor of more obvious destinations--Madrid (about 125 miles southeast), Barcelona, Seville, Granada. That may be why the European Union selected Salamanca, a city of 160,000, as the “Cultural Capital of Europe” for 2002.

The city will host special programs, expositions and recitals every week of “Salamanca 2002.” A festival of ancient religious music will feature concerts and recitals throughout the year, for example, and Van Morrison is scheduled to perform in June.

My wife, our adult son, Paul, and I came to Salamanca in early January to get a look at the culture it will share with the world. It was our Christmas present to Paul; his gift to us was his expertise in traveling in Spain on a small budget.

For example, I should have listened to Paul when he advised that “two stars” often means “no heat in January.”

Our hotel, Hostal Orly, seemed as though it should have heat; otherwise why did it always smell of fuel oil? Nevertheless, when darkness fell, so did the room temperature, and we shivered in our bunks. But at $51 a night--for two rooms just around the corner from the main square--we decided we could deal with it.

We also learned, to our delight, that Salamanca is a city for walkers. Aside from trips between the train station and our hotel, we never needed a cab or bus. The town is compact, the hills are few, and many of the major streets are for pedestrians only.

Salamanca has many of those things we Americans prize in European travel: quirky museums, a cathedral you could park a 747 in, a 2nd century Roman bridge that leads into town from the road to Madrid, and architectural details on the greatest of cathedrals and the smallest of churches. This richness is accompanied by small-town accessibility and college-town freshness.

Salamanca’s principal attractions have been here for centuries. Even before the Romans, there were settlements on the banks of the Rio Tormes. After the Romans, Visigoths (who called the place “Salmantica”) and then Moors ruled the region. The Moors’ regime gave way to Christian control in the early 12th century, and shortly afterward construction began on the Romanesque cathedral, which still stands next to its younger, larger sister.

We began our tour in the Plaza Mayor, the 18th century town square that is one of the city’s two focal points. Here is the seat of Salamanca’s government, with the Baroque town hall forming the north side of the square. On the east side is a carved stone pavilion that once held box seats for Spanish royalty who viewed the bullfights that took place in the square well into the 19th century.

The plaza plays a role in modern life too. People shop at the stores along its perimeter and in its connecting arcades; they sip their cafe, cerveza (beer) or tinto (Spanish red wine) at its sunlit tables; they use it as a meeting place, a dining place, a courting place. We used it as our breakfast place, eating chocolate pastries and sipping coffee so strong that it makes me wince just to think of it.

The other major focus is the New Cathedral. “New” is relative, of course; it was completed in 1733 after two centuries. It overpowers its surroundings like a battleship anchored in a yacht basin.

The cathedral’s Gothic stone construction is highlighted with decoration in the richly detailed Plateresque style, a term that takes its name and flair from silversmithing (platero). Plateresque surfaces look as though they come from tableware for giants, crowded with curlicues, filigrees and flourishes. In a modern counterpart to the university’s frog legend, during a recent repair of the New Cathedral’s doorjambs, a whimsical stonemason is said to have worked an image of an astronaut into the design.

Inside the cathedral, like bumpkins in Manhattan, we were fascinated by its high vaults and domes and a pipe organ the size of an apartment house.

On Sunday we went to the only Mass of the day in the adjacent Old Cathedral of Santa Maria, which was built during the 12th and 13th centuries. Its altarpiece has 53 gold-outlined panels depicting scenes from the life of Christ, and it resembles a huge sheet of perforated postage stamps. Above that is a panoramic painting of Judgment Day.

At the Mass we attended, I counted 18 people in the congregation and 15 priests officiating. The organist and lectors were priests. The youngest “altar boy” was about 50 years old. I’m not sure whether such low attendance is typical, but never has my soul had such individual attention.

Salamanca has lots of places devoted to soul maintenance: There is barely a block that does not have a convent, a monastery, cloisters or a parish church. Their decoration may be fantastically Baroque or piously plain. The Convent of San Esteban is a Plateresque extravaganza, for example, while the plain, round Church of San Marcos required us to find spiritual inspiration within ourselves.

Almost as common as churches are university buildings. If Salamanca reminded us of an American university town, it was partly because so many of the people there are American university students. An Internet search for “Salamanca” produced several hits from stateside schools’ study-abroad programs. Its attraction is understandable: Salamanca is small, safe and an easy trip from Madrid and other popular destinations.

Not having found the frog in the facade, we went inside the university’s main building to see the drafty, centuries-old lecture halls, the carved stone banisters of the staircases and a richly ornamented chapel built in 1472. The 1508 library is a sort of reliquary, an elegant vault protecting historic volumes rather than spare parts of saints, as do churches.

The main building lies across a pleasant courtyard framed with rows of column-supported arches and now serves as the university’s museum. Inside is a 500-year-old fragment of the original library ceiling, destroyed by the same earthquake that leveled Lisbon in 1755. We could see the painted signs of the zodiac against a deep blue background. In its original condition the ceiling must have been a distraction from reading.

The venerable buildings aside, Salamanca is in many ways like any university town, with inexpensive Internet cafes, souvenir shops (selling frog T-shirts, frog beer mugs), the occasional loud party. And cheap eats.

In this last respect, Salamanca surpasses its American counterparts because of that marvelous Spanish institution, the tapas bar, an entire dining culture based on grazing. Once inside Casa Paca or El Patio Chico, we had to work our way through the crowd to the bar and fight for the attention of a bartender.

Then we made quick selections from the serving dishes--some oily chorizo; chanfaina, a local paella-like dish; stuffed peppers and fried calamari, the true test of a tapas bar. The good ones were golden rings with crusty outsides but tender interiors; the bad ones tasted like fish-flavored gaskets.

When it was time to leave, we fought for the bartenders’ attention again, as they were fielding orders from the length of the bar, drawing beers, uncorking tintos, dodging scurrying colleagues, watching the soccer game. When we asked for the check, they would enter a trancelike state, trying to remember all the things we had eaten, because they hadn’t written anything down. So how do they keep track? The total, I think, is an approximation--maybe high, maybe low. But the bill is so cheap you won’t care. We three often ate for $12 or $15, including wine.

Cruising for tapas became our preferred method of dining. Some of the best meals I had in Spain I ate standing up in Salamanca. We had them every night, sometimes working our way from one bar to another, sampling the specialties of each. Tapas are best shared among a group, because you can share the finds and misses--without overeating. Tapas portions are just big enough for three people to sample before you have to flag down the bartender for another order.

We had more leisurely, sit-down meals at lunch, the main meal of the day. At Chez Victor, near the Plaza Mayor, we enjoyed duck breast in pink peppercorn sauce and grilled turbot splashed with a bell pepper vinaigrette. At Restaurante El Bardo, near the university, we had lamb so tender that I forgot that I don’t like lamb.

The small museums of Salamanca gave us a cultural buffet as well. The Castilla-Leon Regional Film Library, about five blocks east of the Plaza Mayor, for example, has a series of exhibits showing how people went to the movies before there were movies. Shadow puppetry, the zoetrope (an early demonstration of the principle that puts the “motion” in motion pictures) and traveling magic lantern shows were a big deal in the pre-CinemaScope world.

Los Sonidos del Ayer (The Sounds of Yesterday), a museum of radio receivers, occupies the large mezzanine of a modern public market just north of the city’s historic district. Overlooking the fish and meat stalls are examples ranging from home-built crystal sets to the big floor models that once commanded the living room to ‘60s transistor radios.

La Medida del Tiempo is a clock and watch museum west of the Plaza Mayor. It holds gilded mantel clocks, wall clocks with pendulums the size of bass guitars and an old tower clock, showing its finely crafted innards.

On the south edge of town, overlooking the river, Casa Lis displays a collection of Art Nouveau and Art Deco works. We saw glasswork and porcelains by Lalique and Galle, enamels from Limoges, Kewpie dolls with expressions so realistic that I suspect they wink at one another when no one is looking, and tableware and etched glass vases. Casa Lis is itself a work of art too--appearing like a big stained glass and wrought-iron bonbon box at the edge of the cathedral and university neighborhood.

The best view of Casa Lis is from behind and below it, down near the Rio Tormes.

On the last day of our stay, we walked down to the riverbank, near the Roman bridge, and turned around for one of those oh-my-gosh views of the town. That giant cathedral, the red tile roofs, the bell towers poking up like shoots in a spring garden--Salamanca has so much to see.

Even if we couldn’t see the frog.

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Guidebook: Salamanca Studies

Getting there: From LAX, direct service to Madrid, the most accessible airport to Salamanca, is available on US Airways, and connecting service (change of planes) is offered on American, Alitalia, Continental, Delta, British and Air France. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $656.

You can take the RENFE train from Madrid to Salamanca, a 21/2-hour ride that costs about $22 round trip. There are at least two trains each day. For information: 011-34-902-24-0202, www.renfe.es/ingles.

Telephones: To call the numbers below from the U.S., dial 011 (international dialing code), 34 (country code for Spain), 923 (city code for Salamanca) and the local number.

Where to stay: Abba Fonseca Hotel, 2 Plaza San Blas; 01-10-10, fax 01-10-11, www.abbahotels.com. A new luxury hotel, it has a striking view of New Cathedral. Doubles from $85.

Gran Hotel, 3 Poeta Iglesias; telephone/fax 21-35-00, www.helcom.es/granhotel. Off Plaza Mayor and an easy walk to cultural sites, this elegant hotel, built in 1930 but updated in 1992, has been host to movie stars and royalty. Doubles from $180 (ask about special rates).

Hotel Don Juan, 6 Quintana; 26-14-73, fax 26-24-75. Comfy hotel is well located in the historic district. Doubles from about $51.

Where to eat: Restaurante el Bardo, 8 Calle Compania (near tourist information office); 25-02-65. Has good vegetarian platters, but also one of the best leg of lamb plates I’ve ever tasted. Also good was a crepe stuffed with cheese, walnuts and cuttlefish. Lunch for two was about $26, with wine.

Bar Restaurante El Patio Chico, 13 Calle Melendez (near Plaza San Benito), no phone. Big, boisterous bar has the usual tapas but also a grill for steaks and ribs. A tip: Timid people go hungry. About $10 for two, including beer or wine.

Restaurante Cafe Casa Paca, 10 Plaza del Peso; 21-89-93. One of the best tapas bars in the city, with a nice selection of sherries too. About $10 for two.

Restaurante Chez Victor, 26 Calle Espoz y Mina; 21-31-23. Among the city’s finest restaurants. Begin with the Iberico ham whole wheat pizza, then try the sea bass in pistachio sauce. Dinner for two about $80, not including wine.

For more information: Tourist Office of Spain, 8383 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 956, Beverly Hills, CA 90211; (323) 658-7188 or (323) 658-7192, fax (323) 658-1061, www.okspain.org.

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Jerry V. Haines is a lawyer in Washington, D.C.