Convento de San Esteban, Salamanca

According to tradition, Christopher Columbus stayed in this convent (actually in the previous one, destroyed to build this one) when he went to Salamanca to defend before the geographers of the University the possibility of reaching the Indies by sailing to the West.

In its center is represented the martyrdom of Saint Stephen and above a Calvary, reliefs both executed by Juan Antonio Ceroni at the beginning of the 17th century.

The portico, composed of semicircular arches, is inspired by Italian Renaissance loggias, contrasting its sparse ornamentation with the decorative exuberance of the church façade.

It has a Latin cross plan and a single nave, with chapels between the buttresses and the choir raised on a segmental arch at the foot of the church.

Six large solomonic columns, covered with vegetal decoration, run along the first body, in the center of which is the central tabernacle conceived as a small temple, flanked by a pair of columns on each side; between these and those of the two at the ends are two niches that shelter the sculptures of Saint Dominic and Saint Francis of Assisi, attributed to the author of the altarpiece.

Built in the 17th century under the patronage of Fray Pedro de Herrera Suárez, bishop of Tuy, by the architects Alonso Sardiña and Juan Moreno.

Of classical taste, the walls are covered by Corinthian order pilasters with curved and triangular split pediments topped with pyramids.

Of the same author are the images of the Assumption of the Virgin, St. Peter and St. Paul that are in the headwall, presided over by an earlier Christ known as Jesús de la Promesa.

On the upper floor the roof is a simple wooden artesonado, the galleries being opened by means of forty semicircular arches, which rest on pilasters whose capitals are decorated with grotesques and other motifs.

The "new Chapter", larger, more monumental and illuminated than the old one, dates from the 17th century, resembling in its layout the Sacristy, which is accessed through the start of the Stairway of Soto.

San Esteban is also the canonical seat of the Dominican Fraternity of Holy Christ of the Good Death which makes its penitential procession in Salamanca's Holy Week at dawn on Good Friday, and the Royal and Pontifical Sacrament Confraternity of Mary, Mother of God of the Rosary and St. Pius V fraternity of glory, restarted recently after years of inactivity.