Leon Audioguides

Leon began as a Roman legion's camp. The Seventh Legion, Legio VII Gemina, wintered here from around 74 AD, and the city's name is simply a corruption of the word 'legion.' The Roman walls are still traceable in the urban plan, but what followed the Romans is what makes Leon genuinely remarkable: the Kingdom of Leon, medieval Europe's most significant kingdom in the 10th and 11th centuries, held what historians have called the world's first parliament within these walls in 1188. UNESCO recognized the Cortes of Leon as the cradle of modern parliamentarism in 2013, which is a fact that almost nobody who visits the city knows.

The Cathedral of Leon, completed in the 13th century, contains more stained glass than any other Gothic structure in Europe: 1,800 square metres of colored light that transforms the nave at certain hours into something close to pure sensation.

Around the corner, the Basilica of San Isidoro is older, Romanesque, and houses the Royal Pantheon where twelve kings and queens are buried under a ceiling covered in 12th-century frescoes so vivid they have been called the Sistine Chapel of the Romanesque world. Antoni Gaudi designed the Casa Botines here in 1892, a century before anyone outside Catalonia had much heard of him. Leon is also a major stop on the Camino de Santiago, and the pilgrim culture gives the city a particular openness to strangers passing through.