The Cisneros Route. Alcalá in all of its splendour
Alcalá de Henares is located less than one hour away from Madrid, easily and comfortably accessible with a Cercanías regional train leaving Atocha for Guadalajara/Alcalá. The latter is an ideal place to spend a summer’s afternoon, walking around its streets in the old town, especially its picturesque Calle Mayor, which is the longest porched street preserved in Europe. Another must is the Cervantes Birth House-Museum, which organises interesting summer courses such as the one dedicated to the ‘Golden Century Journalists’.
Aside from all of these charms, this year is the 500th anniversary of the death of Cardinal Cisneros, a key figure to understand modern-day Alcalá, since he was the founder of the university which used to be known as Complutense, the original name given to inhabitants of this town in the Madrid region. They say that the cardinal was the best mayor the city ever had, a local version of King Charles III, who carried out a series of reforms so considerable that they allowed the city to present itself as an academic epicentre and its conversion to Universitas Complutensis, Civitas Dei (City of God).
So, what does this route include? Starting at the Tourism Office on Plaza de Cervantes every Saturday at 5.00 p.m., it offers a tour around the most representative spots of the city’s culture, all of which influenced in some way by Cardinal Cisneros. The Archbishop’s Palace, the Cisnerian Studies Centre, the Madre de Dios Minor College and the Santa Catalina College among others are just some of the key stops on this route. Throughout it, you can see the city transform itself from an average Sixteenth-century town to a Renaissance town under Cisneros’s tutelage.
One of the most attractive and interesting resources to discover Cisneros’s legacy is the mobile app which you can download here, which offers the latest information on this initiative as well as all the news related to the universe of Cardinal Cisneros.
Categories: Madrid Cultura, Madrid Ocio, Madrid Turismo
