Huesca thematic

Number 77. October of 2004. Spanish language  Principal menu

Small squares in Huesca


In the old part of the city
the smallest squares


      In a city's old town, the spaces to be found between the streets become especially interesting, expanses opened up throughout time for differing reasons, rich meeting points, loaded with meaning and giving their own flavour to urban streets. Along with the crossroads of the walled city's two main streets, the routes interspersed with these spaces are one of Huesca's principal features.
      This diverse environment, often made up of contrasting sensations, surpasses a mere architectural analysis, to submerge itself in evocations of urban life, both past and present.. It is precisely this power of suggestion which best sums up the space surrounding buildings from any epoch, not only seen in their physical aspect, but also as possibilities thrown up by interaction with their environment. One tour which hardly manages to include everything, begins in the South in the San Pedro square, centre of Mozarabic Huesca (Mozarabs were Christians owing allegiance to a Moorish king). Its church, the oldest in the city, was raised on the foundations of a previous Roman temple which was followed by a Visigoth structure, church to the Mozarabs during the Moorish occupation. The present San Pedro el Viejo church was built after the Christian reconquest and nowadays represents Huesca's most outstanding example of the Aragonese Romanesque. The square was an old cemetery belonging to the church, and from the 17th century on, a market. To this day it keeps its motley shape, surrounded by that special atmosphere, somewhere between warm, friendly and languid which characterises many of the spaces to be found in the old town.
      Behind it, along Zalmedina street, age-old site of the old Casa de la Primicia or store-house for the crops tithed to the chapter, there lies another space, the Moneda square, consisting of the meeting point between the Desengaño and Peligros streets. It contained until recently the remains of the old estate of the Temple military order, enclosed within its own fortifications and also origin of a large urban fabric made up of "poblaciones" of medieval settlements of which only memories remain today.
      Further North, the Latre square leads on to the Templarios street, forming a still unpaved enclosure evoking a rural atmosphere, despite being a space which is perfectly integrated in an urban tour. One can more on from there to the neighbouring Fueros square. On a gentle scale and recently rebuilt, its buildings offer a heterogeneous image although they are unified by the same reserved mood. To the North, the Urriés square, where the Esmir and Urriés palaces stood, is a space which has changed in scale with its recent new buildings.
      Further South is the Arista square with the Azara house, offering a tidy image, surrounded by visually buildings with well-arranged openings and structure. lts slope leads one onwards to the next square, the López Allué, a regular and ordered square and a true reflection of 19th century architecture, ending the line of squares on the South side of the old town.

      The square is rectangular in layout, surrounded by buildings with porticoes and an appearance of stable composure, strengthened by the placing of its balconies and unified by their uniform bearing. They are well-proportioned buildings, with regular openings and uniform cornices, the colouring of which contributes to the character of the space they overlook. The present-day square was the result of a new design for the old Aulas square.
      The project initiated the 19th century reforms of the city and included the new market in its central space, also forming the urban centre which would later have to be linked up with the Porches de Galicia and the Navarra square.
      In the Northern part of the walled city, the Lizana square fnrms a widened slope towards the Coso; its remodelling dates from the 17th century, when the block of houses that made up the site were demolished. The square is much changed in its buildings, although it still maintains the same proportions. After crossing Costanilla del Suspiro street, one reaches San Bernardo square, right in the heart of the old university area, where the now-demolished Cistercían school of San Bernardo was established. It is a rectangular space, much reconstructed, which suffers from the visual impact of the new buildings. San Bernardo street links the eponymous square with San Juan de la Peña square. The square has buildings of diverse sizes, allowing one to make out the remains of the old Zuda palace, and serves as entrance to the Universidad square, at the limits of the North-South axis, overlooked by the Santa Cruz seminary with its old church, the Huesca University College and the notable University building, now converted into the Provincial Museum.
 Plaza de San Pedro
      This completes the tour round the minor squares in the walled city which are characteristic of the city's urban image. It is a discontinunus environnlent, diverse in scale but unified by the same visual mood, truly representative of the essence of Huesca.

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See the photograpic streets of Huesca"
* "Huesca, Guía de arquitectura", por L. Labora Yneva



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