Zamora

Zamora's origins reach back to the early Bronze Age. Celtic Vaccaei people later settled here, calling it Ocalam. The first nucleus took root on the rocky plateau between the castle and the hillside of San Ildefonso, a natural stronghold defined by the Duero below.

The name itself may echo that early geography: the ancient term Okelo Duri meant "prominent crag," likely referring to the Peñas de Santa Marta. On the opposite bank sits the district of San Frontis, a name of Roman origin meaning "below the bridge", and at that same point on the river, the Puente Viejo de Olivares stood until 1310, with some remains still visible today. The earliest written record of the city appears in the Parrochiale Suevum of 569, where it is named Senimure and listed within the diocese of Asturica, part of the Suebian Kingdom.

Zamora's most consequential centuries were the tenth to twelfth. After the Battle of Simancas in 939, Ramiro II of León secured control of the Duero valley, and Zamora, sitting high above the river, became one of the key frontier strongholds of the Christian kingdoms. That strategic importance came at a cost: in 981, the Moorish military leader Almanzor attacked and devastated the city.

He struck again in subsequent years, pushing through the region and sacking León itself while King Bermudo II sheltered in Zamora. The city reached its greatest political, economic and architectural peak during this same period as part of the Kingdom of León. The gradual southward movement of the frontier worked in its favour, until the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 opened southern Iberia to the Christian kingdoms, and Zamora lost its strategic importance.

One figure closely associated with this region is Viriato, the Lusitanian leader who won eight victories against Rome and whom the Romans called the "terror romanorum." His practice of tearing a strip from a captured red Roman standard and raising it on his lance is considered the origin of Zamora's flag, the Seña Bermeja.

Zamora's period of greatest political and economic power left a physical mark that still defines the city. The eleventh century is considered its golden age, and the decades around its end and the early twelfth century produced an extraordinary body of Romanesque architecture, the largest and most concentrated in Spain, and among the most significant in Europe. The centrepiece is the Cathedral of the Salvador, built in the twelfth century.

Plain and direct in its forms, it follows a Latin cross plan with three naves and three original apses, the latter later replaced by a Gothic east end. Its dome, covered in a distinctive scale-pattern decoration, is the cathedral's defining feature and a symbol of the city. Historian José Ángel Rivera de las Heras described it as "a work of genius without parallel in medieval architecture," noting that it became the model for similar domes at the Old Cathedral of Salamanca, the Collegiate church of Toro, and the chapter house of Plasencia cathedral.

The cathedral has had four high altarpieces over the centuries. The original Romanesque one was replaced by a Gothic altarpiece painted by Fernando Gallego and his workshop between 1490 and 1494, his earliest known surviving work had already been commissioned by the cathedral for the Chapel of San Ildefonso in the late 1470s, and remains there today. The Gothic altarpiece was sold in 1715 to the nearby village of Arcenillas.

Of its at least 35 panels, 19 passed into private hands following nineteenth-century church property seizures; two were donated to the Bishopric in 1925 and are now displayed in the Cathedral Museum. A Baroque altarpiece by sculptor Joaquín Benito Churriguera followed but was damaged in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and dismantled in 1758. The current altarpiece is neoclassical, in marble and gilded bronze, designed by Ventura Rodríguez.

The cathedral's choir, built between 1512 and 1516 by Juan de Bruselas, is also worth noting. The Cathedral Museum holds a remarkable collection of Flemish tapestries from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, the finest of which depict the Trojan War. Beyond the cathedral, twenty-two Romanesque churches are recorded within the city.

The church of San Pedro y San Ildefonso is the largest after the cathedral and a National Monument since 1974. San Claudio de Olivares, first documented in 1157 and a National Monument since 1931, is notable for its carved capitals. The church of Santiago de los Caballeros is where Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, El Cid, was knighted by King Fernando I.

Zamora has no airport; the nearest are Valladolid (about 1 hour 15 minutes by bus) and Salamanca (about 45 minutes), with Madrid's airport roughly three hours away. By road, travellers from northern Spain can use the A-66 Via de la Plata, which becomes the N-630 at Benavente; from Galicia, the N-631 via Puebla de Sanabria connects to the N-630; from the east, the A-11 via Tordesillas; from Portugal, the N-122 via Braganza or the ZA-324 via Miranda do Douro. The bus station connects Zamora to villages in its province, towns across Castilla y León, most other Spanish regions, and some Portuguese cities.

The train station serves two lines: one running A Coruña–Santiago de Compostela–Ourense–Zamora–Segovia–Ávila–Madrid, and one connecting Puebla de Sanabria with Valladolid. Local specialities worth trying include bacalao a la tranca, pulpo a la sanabresa, and dos y pingada (two fried eggs with fried ham, traditionally eaten at Easter). Restaurants named in local sources include Restaurante Sancho II (Parque de la Marina S/N, tel. 980 52 60 54), Restaurante Serafín (Plaza del Maestro Haedo 10, tel. 980 53 14 22), and Restaurante Capitol (Plaza Santa Eulalia 12, tel. 980 534 306).