Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain v1.0
I did not make this alone. My mate Jim prepared the model and I hand-placed it for him and built the package. Screenshots are also by me. Jim wishes to stay low-key, so I will also be publishing his creations under my portfolio. For the moment I’m focused on Italy and he’ll be working on Spanish scenery. Once again, thanks to Google for the photogrammetry data.
Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, north-western Spain, is perhaps the third holiest place in Roman Catholicism after Jerusalem and Rome. It is famous for being the purported burial place of the Apostle James, and the end of the Camino de Santiago or the Way of St James, one of Europe’s greatest pilgrimage routes. Santiago’s claim to fame arrived in the 9th century when a hermit called Pelagius allegedly “discovered” the resting place of St James. In the following centuries, the city grew into a booming pilgrimage centre, with an estimated quarter-million pilgrims turning up each year in the 11th and 12th centuries. In accordance with the Camino’s popularity in this period, Archbishop Diego Pelaez commissioned the construction of its magnificent Gothic-Romanesque cathedral, which still dominates the city today. After peaking in the 14th and 15th centuries, convoluted political situations in the following centuries led to a gradual decline in pilgrim numbers. It was only in the 20th century that commercialized transport allowed for a resurgence of international interest in the Camino and its end-point. Today, Santiago de Compostela is one of the most popular destinations in Spain, and visitors of every background and faith undertake the Camino to enjoy the scenery and to explore its history if nothing else.
