Back home from Teruel

…and it was great fun! My flight there was horrible, the trip back somewhat better, but the stay was awesome 🙂 I got to visit one of the satellite museums of Dinopolis, and found an hour yesterday morning to walk around the old town and take some more photos, with a very different light and atmosphere than last time.

Here are a few impressions:

(click for larger size)
Plaza Carlos Castell, more commonly known as the Plaza del Torico, the main square of Teruel. It is not really a square square, but rather formed by the street you can see on the left widening and splitting into the two you can see on the right. The Christmas-decorated thing on the right is a fountain, and on top of that fountain you can find El Torico, the little bull, the totem of Teruel. As you can see from the images below, my Tamron 70-300 mm lens with the image stabilizer finally arrive 😉

Around the square the houses form an arcaded sidewalk, with Roman-Tuscan stone columns topped by a square stone abacus, carrying another, rectangular and wooden abacus to carry the equally wooden architrave. Weird, weird, weird….. Interestingly, some columns had to be placed between two houses, supporting both, in order to achieve regular spacing:

Obviously, lots of cafés and restaurants make use of the sheltered space, but spill out into the square with their tables in nice weather.

As the panorama above shows the houses (and that’s all houses, not just those on the square) all follow the typical style with small balconies for all levels, but vary widely in the design details. Some are fairly simple, other intricately ornamented, for example in Art Nouveau style.

The other typical architectural element of Teruel is the Mudejár style – on all this also see my EAVP 2012 post here. One important building I did not show back then is La Escalinata neo-mudejár, a stair connecting the railway station below to the old town on the hill.

This stair was where I photographed the pigeon  group prOn series before the EAVP field trip this summer. Below is an example of original mudejár architecture: two vies of Torre de San Marco and a detail:

I’ve shown Teruel Catehdral before, here’s an early morning winter view:

The highlight of the trip, though, was a visit to one of the satellite museums, aptly named Titania. It is located in Riodeva, the small town Turiasaurus riodevensis is named after. More on this trip later. Here’s a view of the town….

…and here is the original right femur of a new find which probably belongs to Turiasaurus, too, along with Dr. Luis Alcalá, Director Gerente de la Fundación Conjuncto Paleontologógico de Teruel-Dinópolis/Museum Aragonés de Paleontología. Luis is a great guy and organized my visit – many thanks!