Zaragoza tourist information - Culture, history and monumenst of Zaragoza - Aragon, Spain

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ARAGON Information: ZARAGOZA Information

A settlement from the eighth century BC, unearthed in a neighbourhood, shows the antiquity of Zaragoza. The old part of the city retains the urban structure created during the Roman era. Stretches of second-century walls are still standing, together with remains of the amphitheatre.
The Aljaferia is an Islamic fortress, relatively well preserved, from the era of the Taifa kingdoms. A number of museums have collected some of its pieces. The most important part of what has been preserved and rebuilt is the walled enclosure, the Patio de los Naranjos or Courtyard of Orange Trees, the small sanctuary and the Throne room, decorated during the period of reformation by Isabella and Ferdinand, the 'Catholic Kings', with carved and painted coffering, and structured into squares and lanes separated by ribboned patterns. The palace has an abundance of decorative elements, for which soft materials such as alabaster and gypsum were chosen. The main contributions of the Aljaferia are the elongated capital and mixed-line arches. The Santa Engracia church, completed in the sixteenth century, preserves early Christian sarcophagi from the fourth century, crafted in Roman workshops. The main front of the monastery, the work of Gil Morlanes the Elder (1450-1517), shows an Italian taste in the structure and ornamental motifs, and the sculptures display the culmination of the sculptor's own style. The church front was restored following the Napoleonic invasion.
The apses of the San Salvador cathedral or Seo work on which began at the end of the twelfth century, are in a Romanesque style. The cathedral has three naves and a Mudejar lantern dome from the sixteenth century. Between 1376 and 1380, Pere Morgues, the Catalan sculptor and precious-metal craftsman, sculpted in alabaster the tomb of Archbishop Lope Fernandez de Luna, achieving a high degree of perfection in including such a large amount of figures. The work marks the beginnings of naturalist realism.
The basilica of Nuestra Senora del Pilar was built on the same site where, according to Christian tradition, the Mother of God appeared "in mortal flesh" to the apostle St James to encourage him in his mission to announce the Gospel. The Romanesque temple was destroyed by fire in 1434, though the tympanum on the main front survives.

What followed was a Gothic construction, which in turn led to the seventeenth and eighteenth century basilica. Elements of the Gothic church include the choir stalls and the main altarpiece by Damian Forment, carved between 1509 and 1518, with an Italian influence replete with balusters, garlands, tondos, and Gothic and Renaissance elements, the latter of which show a new concept of the body and plastic expression. The 150 seats in the choir stalls (the largest in Spain) employ a grotesque narrative relief work in the decoration. The present-day church was designed, at the end of the seventeenth century, by Francisco Herrera el Mozo, with three naves, plus two more for chapels. Domingo Yarzo produced the eleven cupolas in the eighteenth century. Gonzalez Velazquez, the Bayeu brothers and Goya painted cupolas and pen dentives. Goya is responsible for the vaults in the choir, and for the vault of the San Joaquin chapel. As well as directing the church's remodelling works, in the eighteenth century Ventura Rodríguez concentrated on the Santa Capilla, the Holy Chapel, giving it an oval layout and cupola; it is the site of the apparition, and preserves the column brought by the Virgin Mary. The Lonja, the market exchange from the mid sixteenth century, combines the Gothic and the Plateresque, as occurs with so many buildings in Aragon. A graceful set of columns, ribs and ornamentation in the roofing seems to multiply the space inside.
The urban landscape includes some beautiful Mudejar towers, such as San Pablo and la Magdalena, both from the early fourteenth century. The two churches have works by Damian Forment. Zaragoza has an abundance of palaces from the Renaissance period, some of them in a purist style, such as la Maestranza or the palace of the Counts of Fuenclara, and others with the peculiar feature of combining stone and brick, such as the palace of los Lucena. Practically all of them are rich in sculptural work, and this is certainly the case in the recently rebuilt Infanta palace, and the palace of los Pardo, now home to the Cam on Aznar Museum.
In Zaragoza, there are two famous monuments: Los Sitios, in the square of the same name, alluding to epic achievement during the War of Independence, and the Olympic salute by Pablo Gargallo, prepared for the 1929 Universal Exposition in Barcelona.

El Tubo and el Coso Bajo are two modern neighbourhoods, the first having a traditional appearance, with a good number of local bars or tascas in which to have a drink and enjoy the atmosphere.