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Colegio Mayor San Ildefonso Review

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Colegio Mayor San Ildefonso

  • Address: Pl. San Diego s/n, Alcalá de Henares, 28801
  • Phone: 91/885-6487

Fodor's Review:

The city's most significant building is Colegio Mayor San Ildefonso, a part of Alcala de Henares' university and now the current university president's office. The university was founded by Cardinal Cisneros in 1499 to teach law, art, and theology; in 1514, medicine was added. Cisneros, Isabella's confessor, was a powerful and wise man who greatly influenced the politics and culture of his time. He coordinated the works that produced the first polyglot Bible (a translation of the holy scriptures in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic). After a few centuries of glory, the university closed down in 1836 after the state began confiscating the Catholic Church's assets. Later the university was bought back by a group of citizens in 1850. The group's successors started renting the premises to the state in 1977 for the symbolic amount of 1 peseta a year, so that the university could reopen. The building has four patios and a magnificent chapel, done in a mix of Gothic, plateresque, and Mudejar styles, which houses Cisneros's highly ornamented sepulchre (his remains are safeguarded beneath Alcalá's cathedral's presbytery), carved in Carrara marble. The beautiful main lecture hall, the students' graduation exam room in the 16th and 17th centuries, is where Juan Carlos I, Spain's present-day king, awards the annual Premio Cervantes, the most distinguished literature award in the Spanish language. Students offer guided tours of the building several times a day—call in advance for one in English.

  • Cost: EUR 2,50
  • Open: Mon. -Fri. 11-7 and Sat.- Sun. 11-7:30
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