Salamanca is known as “La Ciudad Dorada” (the Golden City), owing to the luminous glow of its distinctive sandstone buildings, and it dominates the surrounding plains from its perch on the Tormes River. The university was founded in 1134, and its antiquity is therefore on par with that of Oxford, Bologna and the Sorbonne. (Christopher Columbus delivered lectures here upon his return from the New World.) If the head of the city is its university, its heart is the Plaza Mayor, one of Europe’s largest and most beautiful squares, lined with colonnaded galleries and handsome baroque buildings.