The university façade and the Casa de las Conchas

The Escuelas Mayores façade, carved around 1529, is the definition of plateresque: a flat sandstone panel worked so finely that it looks like silver, with medallions, coats of arms and foliage covering every centimetre. Somewhere in it sits a small frog on a skull, and students have looked for it before exams for generations — a detail that gives any session an easy game.

The Patio de Escuelas in front is a small enclosed square with a statue of Fray Luis de León, and it is one of the few corners of the centre that stays reasonably calm. The courtyard inside is part of the paid university visit; the façade and the square are free.

A hundred metres north, the Casa de las Conchas is a late-Gothic townhouse whose entire façade is studded with carved scallop shells, the badge of the Order of Santiago. Its courtyard is now a public library, free to enter, with a two-storey arcade around a well — cool, quiet and usable in any weather.

Both buildings sit on the Rúa Mayor between the Plaza Mayor and the cathedrals, so they naturally form the middle of a walking session. Morning light reaches the university façade; the shell house is best in flat light because the relief does the work.