Salamanca / The verdict

Are Salamanca's university and Plaza Mayor worth it?

Go: the Plaza Mayor is free and the city's favorite meeting point, while the historic university building behind the famous frog facade costs EUR 10 for its centuries old classrooms.

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Why this verdict

These are the two stops every Salamanca day is built around, and only one of them costs anything. The Plaza Mayor, an 18th century Baroque square ringed with arcades, is free and central, and travelers treat it as the city’s meeting point from the morning coffee to the evening drink. The University of Salamanca’s historic building, founded in 1218 and one of the oldest university sites in Europe, charges EUR 10 to walk its old lecture rooms. Across 12 reports nobody argues against either stop; the reservations are about price, crowds and food, which shape how you visit rather than whether you go.

The plaza draws the warmest words. A student who spent a year in the city says it never stopped impressing, especially at golden hour, and a visitor on a weekend with her parents ranks it among the most beautiful squares in Spain. The same reports carry the main catch: the restaurants on the square and on Rua Mayor are the most touristy places to eat, so the usual advice is a coffee on the plaza and dinner a street or two back.

Timing and tickets

The university facade has its own ritual. Groups crowd the doorway searching for a small frog carved on a skull, said to bring luck in exams, and one writer watched people spend more than half an hour looking. Inside, the old classrooms are what travelers single out; a two day visitor found them kept almost as they were. The famous library is the letdown, visible only through glass, and one traveler calls the interior visit expensive for that reason. If the interior does not appeal, the facade, the frog hunt and the free Cielo de Salamanca vault in the Escuelas Menores courtyard give much of the experience for nothing, and one couple liked the Cielo enough to return three times. The student population is a bonus: a first time visitor credits it with keeping tapas bars fairly priced around the old town. On Sundays and holidays the historic building closes at 14:00, so weekend visitors should go in the morning.