Salamanca

The university's greatest days still lay ahead. Its masters met to weigh Columbus's plans before his first voyage, and in 1492 Antonio de Nebrija published his grammar of Castilian, the first study of any Western European language other than Latin. In the 16th century the city reached its height, with some 24,000 inhabitants and about 6,500 students enrolling each year around 1580. Its Dominican teachers, led by Francisco de Vitoria and remembered as the School of Salamanca, rebuilt the idea of natural law around the new conquests and defended the rights of the peoples of the Americas against the colonists. Then Salamanca shared the decline of the Castilian Meseta, falling to 12,000 people by 1651, and only the revival of the 18th century finished its long-stalled New Cathedral and gave it the great Baroque Plaza Mayor of 1729.