On your right is Cabildo House, a flat, symmetrical granite building adorned with geometric stone plates, red-shuttered windows, and a distinctive iron star perched on its ornate central peak.
This is the masterpiece of Clemente Fernandez Sarela. He was the master of the Galician plate baroque style, an architectural movement that used flat, cut-out geometric shapes in stone, and he designed this magnificent facade between seventeen fifty-four and seventeen fifty-eight. It looks like the grand palace of a wealthy noble, does it not? Well, it is actually one of the greatest architectural tricks in the city.
Back in the mid-eighteenth century, the powerful Cathedral chapter had an embarrassing problem. They had spent fortunes making the nearby Cathedral look like a vision of heaven on earth, but this square faced the chaotic, asymmetrical, and frankly ugly back ends of medieval houses. It was a terrible look for an institution that wanted to impress visiting pilgrims and assert its earthly authority.
So, they hired Sarela to build a mask. Cabildo House is essentially a stone billboard, a theatrical curtain designed purely to hide the ugly side of the city. The illusion is so complete that you would never guess what hides behind it. The building is incredibly shallow, in some places less than three meters, or about nine feet, deep. Sarela was so obsessed with creating a perfectly symmetrical, prestigious exterior that he literally bricked up the existing windows of the houses he was hiding. He plunged the interior rooms into permanent darkness just so his stone canvas would look flawless from the square.
The contrast between the outside and the inside is staggering. While the facade projected supreme wealth, the families living inside were crammed into rooms barely wide enough to lie down in. They endured the cold Galician granite and the smoke of tiny kitchens. Down on the ground floor, the arches were rented out to the city's silversmiths. By law, the silversmiths could only work in this specific square, meaning the constant, sharp ringing of metal hammers formed the daily soundtrack for anyone trapped in the tiny apartments above.
If you look all the way up to the top corners of the roof, you will see two massive granite gargoyles jutting out. Each one weighs nearly two tons. Lifting those blocks into place using only eighteenth-century ropes and wooden pulleys was a terrifying gamble. A single snapped rope would have destroyed Sarela's beautiful new facade. And crowning the very center is that iron star. It is a nod to the city's Latin name, Campus Stellae, or Field of the Star, a perfect symbol of how the city’s heavenly legends were constantly used to justify these massive, earthly displays of power and pride.
Today, the building hosts exhibitions, and you can step inside to see the architectural trickery for yourself if you visit Tuesday through Saturday between ten A-M and two P-M or four to eight P-M, or on Sunday mornings until two P-M. Now, let us move toward the museum that guards the city's actual artifacts, as the Museum of Pilgrimages and Santiago is right next to us.
