Astorga: Gaudí, Chocolate and Asturica Augusta
Castilla y León, Spain
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Palacio Episcopal
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250
XP
+100 Spain
= 350 total
1 day
Astorga: Gaudí, Chocolate and Asturica Augusta
250 + 100 XP
Astorga began as a Roman camp for the Legio X Gemina in the late 1st century BC, became the civilian town of Asturica Augusta and capital of the Conventus Asturum, and had a bishop — Basílides — by the mid-3rd century. When fire destroyed the old episcopal palace, Bishop Grau commissioned a new one from his friend Antoni Gaudí; it went up between 1889 and 1913, and Gaudí walked off the job in 1893 after Grau died and the council began arguing with him. The town's other trade is chocolate, which arrived with the railway and built the modern place.
Required Activities
1
of 5
Go into Gaudí's Episcopal Palace, built 1889–1913, and find out why he resigned from it in 1893 and never came back
2
of 5
Find the Roman ergastula and what is left of Asturica Augusta under the modern town
3
of 5
Go to the chocolate museum and work out how the railway turned a small León town into a chocolate industry
4
of 5
Buy mantecadas — documented here since 1805, sold as La Perla Astorgana from 1850, and still hand-wrapped by folding the paper a particular way
5
of 5
Eat cocido maragato, the only cocido eaten backwards: meat first, soup last, because that is the order the maragato muleteers ate it in at the roadside inns
Go into Gaudí's Episcopal Palace, built 1889–1913, and find out why he resigned from it in 1893 and never came back
Find the Roman ergastula and what is left of Asturica Augusta under the modern town
Go to the chocolate museum and work out how the railway turned a small León town into a chocolate industry
Buy mantecadas — documented here since 1805, sold as La Perla Astorgana from 1850, and still hand-wrapped by folding the paper a particular way
Eat cocido maragato, the only cocido eaten backwards: meat first, soup last, because that is the order the maragato muleteers ate it in at the roadside inns
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Challenge Location
XP Breakdown
Challenge XP
250 XP
Spain country bonus
+100 XP
Potential total
350 XP
Country bonus earned on completion of your first challenge in Spain.
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