Astorga, Saturday-Sunday, July 7-8, 2007

Small Town, Much Chocolate, Oddly Jewish

Before our trip Debbie had learned that the little town of Astorga has a chocolate museum. Even with a chocolate museum, the city was not on our itinerary. We had originally planed to head northwest through Portugal and follow up on an interest from our previous trip to Europe by visiting Santiago de Compostela, and then drive back down to Madrid via Salamanca and Toledo. However, the more we studied the map and the time still available, we realized that Portugal and other, far western parts of Spain would have to wait for a different excursion.

And so, off we drove to Astorga, a very small city.

We drove right into town from the southeast (just to the left of the red rounded rectangle at the bottom of the Google Earth image above). The highway led us up a little road where we crossed the Tuerto river and directly in through the old city gate. We followed the one-way road signs which lead alsongside a Gaudí apartment building (which looks nothing like a Gaudí building, but seems to have been named for him), down a street with many chocolate shops, past the local Episcopal palace designed by Gaudí and then the local Cathedral before finding an excellent parking space. There we disembarked and began our exploration of the city.

Our walk took us along the same street with the chocolate stores. There must have been nearly ten in the fifty-meter distance. As we neared the center of town we found that the main square in front of the city hall was the location for a band concert, the second week of a four-week series of concerts. We found empty seats and enjoyed the big brass sound bouncing off the stone walls as the Astorga municipal band and a neighboring “Banda de Música de Chantada (Lugo)” offered a variety of popular tunes. The bands were not disturbed when the clock struck its hour and played its own competing melody. Yes, it was 8:30 in the evening and nearly everyone in town seemed to be there.

While in Astorga we also found sites not mentioned in any of our guidebooks. One was clearly marked on the local tourist map:

On the far southeast corner of the city (the green rectangle in the lower right area of the Google Earth image above) we found a “Jardin de la Sinagoga” where the synagogue had once supposedly been.

There we took our “official portrait of the day” as the sun set. We searched in vain for any sign indicating the existence of a synagogue (or even the name of the garden).
On the opposite end of town, leading directly to and from the Cathedral (the large red rounded rectangle at the top of the Google Earth image)

along what seems to be Calle Leopoldo Panero, we found a portion of the route of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela called “Rua de la Judería”

How’s that for an odd juxtaposition:

What looks like a starburst is actually a stylized shell, the symbol of St. James (“Saint Iago”)
It seemed odd that a synagogue would have been on one end of this town and the Jews’ Street on the opposite end. We’ve not been able to learn any more about these oddities. Our Jewish guidebook only states:
The Paseo de la Sinagoga, behind the Cathedral and Gaudí’s Episcopal Palace [MH: which long postdates the time when there were no longer any Jews in Astorga!], ran along the city walls.
We could find no reference to this street in any of the current maps we collected in town.

The chocolate museum was closed by the time we arrived, so we made plans to spend the night. However, we could find no campsite in the area. Instead we “free camped” about a hundred meters outside the city walls alongside a park (the little red circle in the Google Earth view above).

After breakfast in the van we returned to town to explore the Museo del Chocolate which claims to be the oldest one in Spain (1994). The chocolate was OK, but the best part from Mark’s perspective was that they sold a chocolate bar with Christopher Columbus’ picture on it. We explored the Episcopal Palace, designed by Gaudí

where we had our photo taken.

Oh, if you’re wondering what that odd round item is in the lower left corner of the Google Earth image? It’s not a circular particle accelerator, it’s the local bull ring. We filled up on water at a public dump site beside it before continuing on to León.

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