Precede al tít.: Comisaría Regia del TurismoCopia digital. Valladolid : Junta de Castilla y León. Consejería de Cultura y Turismo, 2009-201

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COMISARÍA R E G I A D E L T U R I S M O , S P A I N •i i amé L E Ó N AND ITS PROVINCE. a> oo P A M P H L E T - G U I D E S T O SPANISH A R T AND H I S T O R Y . León and its Province. " p H E ancient C A P I T A L oí the king-dom of LEÓN is, by reason of its past, one oí the most august cities of Spain, though for centuries it has given small sign of Ufe and knew decay long before its Castilian rivals. A strong IVORY CRUCIFI.V, LEÓN MUSEUM. military station under the Romans, its walls made it a point of vantage, and a great day in the history of the Re-conquest was that on which Ordoño I . of Asturias took it from the Moslem and thus established the Cross in a strong position well South of the Cantabrian mountain barrier, which for a century and a half had afforded shelter to the descendants of the Visigoths. Further victories of Alfonso I I I . made the city safe enough to be converted into the rising Christian kingdom's capital early in the tenth century, only to be destroyed by Almanzor some four score years later. It was at once rebuilt, however, and knew great prosperity for a space of two centuries. Fernando I I I . , the Saint, who definitely united the crowns of León and Castile, inherited León thirteen years after the other kingdom came to him, and he perhaps turned his back with regret on the ancient seat of the monarchy. For this reason he may have endowed León with the mighty cathedral that is renowned the world over, thus pensioning it off with a grand title, as a king might send some aged minister into retirement. Standing on its bare plain just below the mountains, León preserves two great monuments, both of them of deep signi-ficance in the history of Spanish civili-sation. The collegiate church of S A N I S I D O R O E L R E A L has attached to it the P A N T E Ó N D E L O S R E Y E S , the burial place of the ancient kings, queens and princes of the blood, which by extraordinary good fortune has been preserved untouched thoughout the ages. No country that has had the same capital from early times on could pos-sibly have preserved a royal foundation o£ the eleventh century almost intact ; these two buildings mean for Spain what Edward the Confessor's church at Westminster would for England. They were begun by Fernando I . (1035-1065), and completed under bis reign ; though VVOODEN CROSSJ LEÓN. the church was partly rebuilt in the íol lowing century, at which period the extraordinary frescoes that adorn the vaults of the Panteón were executed. The time that saw their erection was one when conquest was in the air. The Khalifate of Córdova had come to an end and an active ruler was striving with all his might to drive the Infidel below the mountain-chain that borders León and Castile to the South. Christian Spain suddenly found itself grown out of a number of petty mountain princi-palities into a vast country, ready to take its place in the sisterhood of Euro-pean nations. This meant, in the eleventh century, that León and Castile must go to school to France, the centre of Western activity in the arts of civili-sation. Al l this is reflected in San Isidoro and the Panteón, for when they were begun, building in this part of the world still followed traditions that had been preserved in Asturias from Vis i -gothic times on, almost if not entirely unmodifíed by foreign influences, though they had developed within their own boundaries and by means of their own resources. Of this Asturian or Canta-brian style, to see the earlier examples of which you will have to travel towards Oviedo, the Panteón and the transept of San Isidoro are the latest and most advanced products. How much more it might have achieved no one can say, for its career was interrupted by the importation of far more highly organised architecture from France, the full-blown Burgundian Romanesque that built the nave of San Isidoro, at a time when French queens, bishops and religious 4 orders were lording it in Castile, and a French dynasty was established in Portugal. Several of the finest objects in the Archaeological Museum in Madrid come from San Isidoro, but a few early works of art of the greatest interest still remain there. Supplement them with the con-tents of the M U S E U M installed in the LEÓN CATHEDRAL. fine sixteenth-century ex-convent of S A N M A R C O S , and you will gain a fair view of what remote times have left behind them in this región. Notice especially the second and third century tombstones with horse-shoe arches used on them as a decorative motive, and a very beautiful Romanesque ivory crucifix. The G A T H E D R A L of León, dedicated to Santa Maria de la Regla, is one ol the three great Gothic churches built— though not entirely completed—during the re ígn of Fernando I I I . , the Saint. It is later in style than either Burgos or Toledo, and even more closely related than they to the architecture of Northern France. One of the strangest of all the LEÓN CATHEDRAL, INTERIOR. strange happenings which enliven the course of Spanish history is the appear-ance of this French thirteenth-century church, with its beautiful French sculp-ture and glass, hundreds and hundreds of miles from the country between Amiens and Rheims to which it by rights belongs. There is a little exag-geration here, tor the backward town that León had become by the end of Fernando I I I , ' s reign could not get the money together to build rapidly, and there is a notable falling off in the later portions of the sculptured decoration, so much so that it is easy to tell where the work of the men trained in the French school stopped. The non-LEON CATHEDRAL, TOMB OF KING ORDOÑO I I . Spanish character of this diaphanous church, all windows and glazed tr i -forium, is well illustrated by the fact that it had no influence at all on the contemporary architecture of the coun-try. Unlike Burgos, León found no imitators, but has stood apart and aloof without entering in the least into the Ufe of the country of its captivity, On the railway Une from León to Falencia lies the ancient town o£ S A H A G Ú N , which is remarkable for its churches of S A N L O R E N Z O and S A N T I R S O , good examples of the Romanesque brick architecture that was developed in parts of Spain where stone was lacking or of unsatisfactory quality. And some five miles away is the convent of S A N P E D R O D E L A S D U E Ñ A S , another Romanesque brick church that is nevertheless related to San Isidoro. Away from the railway, and some distance from a good road, so incon-veniently placed that it is well to allow two days for the journey there and back, is the church of S A N M I G U E L D E E S C A L A D A , founded and built by refugee monks from Córdova in the tenth century. Its history is well known, and it is of great importance because of the evidence it possesses as to the style of building used at that period by the Christians at the seat of the Khalifate. It would be too much to say that that style was in no way affected by the Moslem art, the greatest monu-ment of which was being built at the time in Córdova itself, but the resem-blance between San Miguel and the surviving Visigothic monuments is nevertheless very striking, and may be taken to prove the great part played by the Visigothic tradition in the forma-tioil of the sücCeeding Spanish styles, Moslem and Christian alike. On the same journey that takes you to San Miguel you may also arrange to visit the Gistercian nunnery of G R A D E F E S , though only part of it is accessible to the stranger. Abandoning León and its neighbour-hood, you will find in the Western part LEÓN CATHEDRAL, SOUTH DOOR. of the province a región called E L V I E R Z O , very beautiful and wild and containing a few monuments of great interest. On the way thither from León, stop at A S T O R G A , a finely walled town with a late Gothic C A T H E D R A L that boasts oí a big Renaissance altar-piece, the work of Gaspar Becerra. For head-quarters in E l Víerzo, choose either V I L L A F R A N C A or P O N F E R R A D A , or, better still, visit the two places one after the other. They are both delightfully situated and picturesque, and admirable centres for excursions. A few minutes' walk from Ponferrada stands the little church of S A N T O T O M Á S D E L A S O L L A S , a circular construction with KOVAL FUNERAL CHAPEL, SAN ISIDORO, LEÓN. horse-shoe arches that appears to date from the tenth century. Another ex-ample of the same rare c l a s s , S A N T I A G O D E PEÑALBA must be the object of a much longer journey, but it is thoroughly worth while, presenting as it does pecu-liarities of plan that make it one of the most curious buildings in Europe, with 10 its four apses at the ends of the nave and transept. The style known in Spain as Mozárabe, that is built by Christians under the Moslem dominión , has three of its best products in Escalada, Santo T o m á s de las Ollas and Santiago de Peñalba, and i£ you decide to see the two latter, wild bilis and trout-streams SAN MARCOS, LEÓN. will prove to you that E l Vierzo is one of the most enchanting corners of the earth. ROY A L L TYLEB. LONDON, E.C. T. WHITTINGHAM & Co., LTD. 

Spain  : León and its Province

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Spain : León and its Province

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