Time-Traveling to the Dark Ages in Oviedo, Spain
Church of Santa María del Naranco Out of all the places we had on the hitlist for our Roommate Road Trip across Spain’s northern coast, I was most looking forward to Oviedo, the capital of Asturias. This city’s pleasant old town, nestled between green mountains and full of restaurants that serve hearty traditional dishes like fabada bean stew , reminded me a lot of Santiago de Compostela’s . Oviedo kept showing up on my travel radar because of its impressive collection of monuments that date back to the 800s CE—yes, you read that correctly; not 1800 but 800 . My inner history geek couldn’t wait to check out three well-preserved pre-Romanesque churches, built in a style that blossomed in this part of Spain during the otherwise gloomy Dark Ages. What does it mean to be “pre-Romanesque”? Carved capital on an engaged column Also know as Asturian art, this architectural style was born in the earliest days of Spanish history, when the tiny Kingdom of Asturia...