Soria

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Soria is a city in north-central Spain, the capital of the province of Soria in the autonomous community of Castile and León. The municipality had a population of 38,004 in 2006 - nearly 40% of the population of the province.

Situated on the Rio Duero in the east of the autonomous community, the city is noted for its walls and a number of architecturally distinctive churches. These include the Plateresque Concatedral de San Pedro and its cloister, the convent church of Santo Domingo, and the unique architectural mix of the ruined cloisters of San Juan de Duero, on the other side of the river from the old town.

A few kilometres north of the town are the ruins of Numantia, a Celtiberian town whose inhabitants destroyed it rather than let it fall to Scipio. In Soria is the Museo Numantino, devoted to the archaeological remains of this site. The city's professional football club is called CD Numancia.

The 20th century Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, spent five years in Soria teaching French in a secondary school in the early part of the century. These years were to prove essential to his further literary development. He married and lost his wife there and discovered much about the nature of the Castilian people – a subject about which the Generation of '98 authors were very interested.