If you walk through Salamanca at night, you will meet the students, and they are what make the old quarter more than a stone museum. The university has around thirty thousand students, so that the lanes around the Plaza Mayor fill with young people in the evening, and the bars and cafes spill onto the pavements. Some of them wear the black capes and coloured ribbons of the tuna, a tradition of student musicians who serenade people for coins and wine, and the sound of guitars and bandurrias drifting from an archway is a normal part of an evening here.
The literary tradition runs deep. The anonymous novel Lazarillo de Tormes, written in the sixteenth century and generally seen as the first picaresque novel, takes its hero's name from the river that runs beside the city. The poet and priest Fray Luis de León, after four years in an Inquisition prison, is said to have returned to his lecture hall and begun with the words, as we were saying yesterday. The writer Miguel de Unamuno served as rector of the university and is still a figure that locals talk about. The statues and plaques around the old quarter make the city feel like a conversation that never stopped.
Below the hill runs the Tormes, crossed by a long bridge, partly Roman in origin, with arches that carry a pedestrian route on one side. A walk across it at sunset gives the classic view of the cathedral towers glowing above the river, with swifts and storks wheeling in the air. The riverside paths are pleasant for a short stroll, and a place to sit on a bench with a bocadillo. In winter the river may be wreathed in mist, and in summer its banks are cool with poplars.
For motorcyclists, the old quarter is a place to leave the bike and walk, with parking available on the edge, and several routes lead out onto the plateau, where the roads are long and wide. Fuel stations and workshops cluster along the ring roads, and Santa Marta de Tormes is the nearest suburb with supermarkets. The best food is simple: a plate of local cured ham from Guijuelo, a few cubes of cheese and a glass of red wine. The air is crisp, with a hint of woodsmoke in the cold months, and the sound of church bells carries a long way.