Palencia

Palencia stands on the Carrión amid the broad plains of Castile. An episcopal city with roots in Roman and Visigothic times, it became a centre of learning when Alfonso VIII established a Studium Generale here in the early thirteenth century. Beneath its cathedral, the crypt of San Antolín preserves parts of earlier churches. The first stone of the great Gothic cathedral was laid in 1321, and building continued through the following centuries. Its expanding chapels and furnishings reflected the wealth of patrons and the changing tastes of the Castilian Church. Palencia and its surrounding lands also endured the civil wars between Peter I and Henry of Trastámara in the fourteenth century.