Campo de San Francisco, Salamanca, Public park in central Salamanca, Spain.
Campo de San Francisco is a public park in central Salamanca featuring an extensive network of gravel paths and open green spaces. The grounds stretch between major streets and offer numerous benches and shaded areas beneath mature trees.
Campo de San Francisco occupies the former vegetable garden of the vanished convent of San Francisco El Grande. In the 17th century two military barracks were planned for the site but never built because of the War of the Spanish Succession. Around the start of the 19th century the governor Isidro López ordered more than 600 poplars planted and a fountain built, which created the park.
The name comes from the Franciscan convent of San Francisco El Grande, whose orchard this land once was; the convent has disappeared. Near the Capilla de la Vera Cruz stands a humilladero, a reconstruction recalling the original, where the Acto del Descendimiento has been held every Good Friday since 1615. A small Neo-Plateresque building that once housed a lending library also survives in the park.
The park sits centrally and is within walking distance from most neighborhoods, with multiple entry points from different directions. The well-maintained paths make for pleasant strolling, and regularly placed benches offer rest stops throughout.
The Good Friday Act of the Descent (Acto del Descendimiento), established in 1615, is staged not in the park itself but at the humilladero facing the Capilla de la Vera Cruz; the present humilladero is a reconstruction recalling the original.
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