Salamanca

Salamanca is a municipality and city in the autonomous community of Castile and Leon in Spain and the capital of the Province of Salamanca. It lies on the northern half of the Meseta Central in the western-central Iberian Peninsula, straddling the Tormes river, and had 144,458 inhabitants in 2024. The Iron Age hilltop site of Cerro de San Vicente is considered the first settlement, and by the third century BC urban life had consolidated under the influence of the Vaccaei and Vettones. The Romans knew it as Salmantica. After the long depopulation that followed 712, settlement resumed under the Kingdom of Leon, led by Raymond of Burgundy in the eleventh century. The University of Salamanca, founded in 1218, became famous in the sixteenth century for the School of Salamanca, and the Old City, rich in plateresque architecture, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.