Lost Heritage and Historical City. The Way of Santiago (The Way of Saint James) Through the Historical Cartography of the City of Burgos and Its Influence on Urban Form

Abstract

The propuse of this paper is to present a research that collects, documents and analyses the historical cartography of the city of Burgos and culminates with a graphic study of the urban form of the Castilian capital, taking as a fundamental reference the configuring axis of the primitive Way of Saint James as the origin and vertebral axis of the urban form. Based on the current situation of the historical centre of Burgos, and the consideration of the lost urban heritage, a systematic study of previous moments in the city is proposed, in which the urban form configured the space in different ways to those we can contemplate today. The aim here is to introduce time as a determining factor of form. It seems appropriate to consider, in this regard, whether it would be possible to interpret the present city as the result of juxtaposing not only different temporal moments, but also different “heritages”: archaeological, architectural, urbanistic, artistic, etc. And although it also seems evident that these ‘heritages’ have not necessarily had a progressive degree of display, we can state that their quality and quantity has increased or decreased according to the social and temporal circumstances of each historical moment in which we intend to consider the urban form. The relevance of the chosen subject of work could be understood as it is an urban area that has not yet been sufficiently studied from a graphic point of view and which also has great heritage importance, such as the historical centre of the city of Burgos; a crucial itinerary of the Way of Saint James and with a Cathedral that is an integral part of the World Heritage.