Salamanca Plaza Mayor
— the square the sandstone keeps warm after dark.
Not only on a wall.
Salamanca Plaza Mayor, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“A rectangle of golden Villamayor sandstone in the centre of Salamanca, finished in 1755. Locals call it the salón de la ciudad — the city's living room. Three storeys of arches run the whole way around, with medallions of kings and writers carved into the spandrels. After sunset the stone holds the warmth, and the cafés under the arcade fill up slowly.
The place, in three passes.
Plaza Mayor sits at the centre of Salamanca, in Castilla y León, about 200 km west of Madrid. The Baroque square was begun in 1729 to a design by Alberto Churriguera and completed by Andrés García de Quiñones in 1755. Three storeys of arcades enclose a paved rectangle, with the Royal Pavilion on the north side and the San Martín Pavilion on the south. The square was funded jointly by the city and the king, and remains the working heart of the old town today.
The building stone is Villamayor sandstone, quarried in the village of Villamayor de Armuña about 5 km north of the city. It is soft enough to carve cleanly into the Baroque medallions and balustrades that ring the square, and holds a warm yellow-ochre cast that intensifies in low light. The same stone faces most of Salamanca's old monuments, including the cathedrals and the University, which is why the whole UNESCO old town reads in one continuous gold tone from any vantage.
The square is open at all hours and free to walk through; the arcade cafés keep long Spanish hours, roughly 9 am to past midnight. Salamanca sits on the Madrid–Hendaye rail line and is reached in about 1 hour 40 minutes by Avant high-speed train from Madrid Chamartín. The old town was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1988. Saturday evenings draw a slow promenade of locals under the arches, the paseo that gives Spanish squares their evening rhythm.
