In the heart of Andalusia and surrounded by mountains, countryside and wetlands, is the town of Osuna. Walking through its streets is like going back to the Golden Age, a period in which this Sevillian city enjoyed its maximum splendor. That is why it is not surprising that Unesco has focused on some or other decorated corner of Osuna.
Osuna has the best-preserved historic center in Andalusia, declared a historic-artistic complex since 1967. In it we list eleven palaces, as well as a multitude of religious and civil monuments. The Osuna festivities, such as Holy Week or the May Fair are also considered of notable tourist interest.
The origins of Osuna date back to the Turdetans, about three thousand years ago. Between the years 44-43 a. C. was founded as a Roman colony for veterans by General Marco Antonio. It would be under Muslim rule until the 13th century, when the Castilian armies reconquered it, and it belonged to the order of Calatrava until it was ceded to the Téllez Girón dynasty, whose members would end up holding the title of Dukes of Osuna.
It was Juan Téllez Girón, humanist and authentic patron of his time, who endowed the city with a majestic monumental complex that would serve to proudly represent the Sevillian Renaissance. The work of Juan Téllez Girón led him to receive the nickname of El Santo, since his patronage led to the construction of thirteen churches and monasteries, as well as other religious foundations such as hospitals or a university.
The collegiate church of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción deserves special mention, with a harsh exterior, but a rich interior with magnificent examples of the Sevillian Renaissance such as the Pantheon chapel and the Holy Sepulcher chapel or the old sacristy, decorated with works by the painter José de Ribera. Without forgetting the Monastery of La Encarnación, a former hospital, with a beautiful cloister decorated with a Sevillian tile plinth and a large altarpiece that mixes Baroque and Neoclassical styles.
According to Unesco, the most beautiful street in Spain is in Osuna. We are talking about Calle San Pedro, an excellent example of the splendor promoted by the Dukes of Osuna over the centuries. This gallery of luxurious palaces and mansions can be perfectly considered an open-air museum, since it shows the artistic evolution of the different architectural styles that have been present in Spain.
The avenue, wide and straight, rises in a slope at an intermediate point, and is flanked by sumptuous portals with classical decorations, heraldic shields and wrought iron work. Each step forces you to stop before the facades of these historic buildings that served to display the wealth and power of the noble families that lived in them.
The jewel in the crown is undoubtedly the palace of the Marqués de la Gomera, from the 18th century, a period marked by the boom in economic development of the rural nobility thanks to the agrarian policy of the Bourbon dynasty. Its austere stone façade contrasts with a lavish façade of columns that support a beautiful balcony. Inside, the palace houses a Renaissance patio with semicircular arches on columns that functions as the reception of the current Hotel Palacio Marqués de la Gomera.
A few meters further up and on the same sidewalk we find the Cilla del Cabildo, whose sculptural façade, a clear example of Andalusian Baroque, surprises with its sumptuousness, more typical of a courtly palace than a civil building. One of the decorative elements located above the door, which represents the Giralda of Seville, draws attention.
It would be impossible to enumerate in a few lines the large number of houses of different sizes and styles that make up Calle San Pedro. The combination of all of them, which endow this street with special elegance and harmony, have made it worthy of this recognition from Unesco, that of being named the most beautiful street in Spain, and the second in Europe.
As a good man of letters from the Golden Age, Juan Téllez Girón knew the importance of culture and education, which led him to found the PurÃsima Concepción College-University, better known as the University of Osuna. Thanks to a bull from Pope Paul III, the qualifications of this educational institution could be compared to those obtained in other prestigious European universities such as those of Alcalá, Bologna or Salamanca.
The construction scheme of the university follows the ideological precepts of the then new humanist current from Italy, of which its founder was a fervent admirer. Its exterior stands out for its simplicity, flanked by four towers at its corners. The building, with a rectangular floor plan, is articulated around a beautiful porticoed courtyard with a square floor plan and two floors. It is easy to imagine the young students of the golden age with their pens and their books, hurrying across this atrium towards their respective classes.
Another of the most charming corners of the University of Osuna is the Girona room, covered with mural paintings from the 16th century that represent the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus surrounded by a group of angels on the front, and on the wall right, the four fathers of the church (Saint Jerome, Saint Gregory, Saint Ambrose and Saint Augustine) seated on chairs and showing the symbol of writing, the pen. On the opposite wall we can see the four evangelists seated on a marble bench and accompanied by their iconography. The last of the walls shows a bucolic hunting scene.
Calle San Pedro has put Osuna on the map, but even before the Unesco declaration, the city’s artistic heritage and monumental beauty had attracted various creators to shoot world-famous series and movies. The first of these was the Italian director Franco Zeffirelli, who chose Calle San Pedro in 2001 to shoot his feature film about soprano MarÃa Callas, Callas Forever. A year later, the director Vicente Aranda also filmed scenes from Carmen in the collegiate church, and the producer Ãlvaro Begines used the Osuna settings for his short film Engaños.
But the production that undoubtedly put Osuna in the spotlight was Game of Thrones, an American series on HBO with millions of followers around the world. The producers of this popular fantastic saga filmed in 2014 the scene of the Daznak Pit in the Osuna bullring. As a tribute, the city has dedicated two rooms of the Osuna Museum to the series, called El Salón de Hielo y Fuego, where it exposes through images how the filming was done, as well as replicas and autographs of the star cast of Game of Thrones.
As far as Spanish cinema is concerned, in 2019 the city hosted the shooting of the Andalusian feature film Los Hijos de San Luis, and that same year, Osuna was the setting for the film Adiós, starring Mario Casas, Natalia de Molina and Carlos Bardem, which has three Goya Award nominations.
