Official Portal of Tourism. Junta de Castilla y Leon

The Catholic Private University of Salamanca has been located since 1940 in what was the Royal College of the Society of Jesus, founded by Queen Margaret of Austria, wife of Philip III in 1611. This monumental building occupies a vast area of land, since For its construction, several blocks of houses, a palace and a church had to be destroyed. The first stone was laid on November 12, 1617, the king commissioning the plans to the great architect Juan Gómez de Mora. The whole set presents a U-shaped floor plan, in which the long sides are the pavilions, crowned by their characteristic galleries. The magnificent Cloister of Studies stands out, made in the 18th century by Andrés García de Quiñones, who used the giant order of columns and the alternation between geometric openings and other oval ones edged by crowns of fleshy vegetation.