Santiago de Compostela Cathedral Praza do Obradoiro
— the square the pilgrims fall into.
Not only on a wall.
Santiago de Compostela Cathedral Praza do Obradoiro, 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.
“Pilgrims arrive from every direction and end here, in the wide granite plaza in front of the cathedral. The Obradoiro façade, finished by Fernando de Casas y Novoa in 1750, fronts a church that has held the tomb attributed to the apostle James since the ninth century. The square is rimmed by the parador, the city hall, and the old Colegio de San Xerome — four centuries facing each other across cut granite.
The place, in three passes.
The Praza do Obradoiro is the ceremonial heart of Santiago de Compostela, the Galician capital in Spain's northwest. The square sits at roughly 260 metres above sea level on the granite ridge the old city occupies. Four buildings define it: the cathedral on the east side, the Hostal dos Reis Católicos (now a parador) to the north, the Pazo de Raxoi to the west, and the Colegio de San Xerome to the south. UNESCO inscribed the old town of Santiago in 1985, citing the praza and cathedral as the destination point of the medieval Way of St. James.
Everything here is local granite — quarried near the city, cut and dressed, weathered grey-gold by Galician rain. The Obradoiro façade, the late Baroque front carved by Fernando de Casas y Novoa between 1738 and 1750, was raised to shelter the older Pórtico da Gloria of Master Mateo, completed in 1188. Behind the Baroque skin, the Romanesque cathedral begun in 1075 still stands. The plaza paving, also granite, is worn smooth by centuries of pilgrim shoes and the rain that polishes it most days of the week.
Pilgrims who complete the Camino traditionally enter the square from the north, under the arch of the Pazo de Xelmírez, and let their packs slide off in front of the cathedral. The Pilgrim's Mass runs daily; the swinging of the Botafumeiro, the great silver censer suspended from the transept, happens on feast days and when sponsored by pilgrim groups. Holy Years, when the feast of St. James on 25 July falls on a Sunday, draw the largest crowds — the next is in 2027.
