Valladolid (original) (raw)

Valladolid is a city in central Spain, on the Rio Pisuerga. It is the capital of the province of Valladolid and of the autonomous community of Castile-Leon. Its population is some 400 000.

Valladolid was conquered from the Moors in the 10th century; by the 15th century it was the residence of the kings of Castile and remained the capital until 1531, when Philip II moved the capital to Madrid. (It became the capital once again from 1600 to 1606.)

The city (called "Pucela" by its inhabitants) nonetheless boasts few architectural manifestations of its former glory. Some monuments include the unfinished cathedral, the church of Santa Maria la Antigua, the Plaza Mayor (the template for that of Madrid and of future plazas in the Spanish-speaking world), the National Sculpture Museum which includes Spain's greatest collections of polychrome wood sculptures, and the Faculty of Law of the University of Valladolid, whose facade is one of the few surviving works by the same artist who did the transparente in Toledo Cathedral. The Museum of the Cience is next to river Pisuerga. The only surviving house of Miguel de Cervantes is located in Valladolid. Although unfinished, Valladolid's Cathedral was designed by Juan de Herrera, architect of El Escorial.

Valladolid is an economic motor of the autonomía, having an especially important automobile industry. Aeroport.

Vallisoletanos are reputed to speak the purest Castilian of all of Spain, a reputation similar to that of Tours or Aberdeen, Scotland.

There is also a city of Valladolid in Yucatan, Mexico; see: Valladolid, Yucatan