UNIVERSIDAD DE SALAMANCA

Salamanca is one of those cities that really should be further up the world tourism agenda, and flooded with coach parties half the year. That it isn’t is probably due to its slightly off-the-beaten-track location, way out West without a major airport nearby, requiring a dusty  two-and-a-half-hour train journey from Madrid. Thank heavens for that, you might think, since it is a jewel of a city, relatively unspoiled, yet possessing stacks of historical interest and architectural splendour. Even amongst all this, the University stands out as a must-see. Founded in 1218, it’s one of Europe’s oldest, and must be an inspiring environment in which to teach or study. Worth seeing is the Old Library, home to 160,000 tomes, the beautiful staircase, and the stonework facade above the entrance. This is particularly renowned for a tiny figure of a frog on a skull. If you can pick this out from all the other ornamental carvings, you will enjoy good luck, marriage, or academic success, depending on which version of the legend you hear. Well, I failed miserably to spot it after several minutes, and neither have I succeeded since in locating it on any of the photos. Does this mean I will never get that elusive Chair?

FOUNTAIN OF THE WEEK

Fuente de la Fama, Campo Grande, Valladolid

One of several notable fountains in this particularly nice city centre park, this has Fame blowing her trumpet (and a thin stream of water), surrounded by several more vigorous sprays. The overall design of the fountain is by Antonio Iturralde Montel, who placed her on a plinth emerging from an octagonal basin, and the figure of Fame herself is a conventional bronzework by the sculptor Mariano Chicote Recio. It was erected in 1882 to commemorate the recent death of the city mayor, Miguel Íscar Juárez, whose nearby statue reveals a man with the most magnificent handlebar moustache. Well worth blowing your trumpet over.

STATUE OF THE WEEK

Las Meninas, La Rambla, Barcelona

 This isn’t really a statue as such, because it’s gone…these bronze ladies-in-waiting, modelled on the Infantas Margarita and Maria Teresa from Velázquez’s famous canvas of the same name, gave one final curtsy and left La Rambla shortly after the picture was taken back in May 2008. Part of an exhibition by US-based Spanish artist Manolo Valdés to bring art to the street, they seem to be making their way slowly around Europe: the most recent sighting of them is in a park in The Hague…