The story of this place
Founded around 1218 and confirmed by royal charter in 1254, Salamanca is the oldest university in the Spanish-speaking world. Columbus consulted its cosmographers before sailing; in the 16th century its theologians, the 'School of Salamanca,' argued the revolutionary idea that indigenous Americans were rational beings with natural rights—an early theory of human rights and international law. Its plateresque façade is so intricately carved that students still hunt for a tiny frog perched on a skull, said to bring luck in exams to whoever spots it unaided. Fray Luis de León, jailed by the Inquisition, famously resumed a lecture years later with 'As we were saying yesterday.'