University and Historic Precinct of Alcalá de Henares
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How it came to be
Alcalá de Henares is a town 35 km northeast of Madrid. On 20 May 1293 King Sancho IV of Castile licensed Archbishop Gonzalo Pérez Gudiel of Toledo to set up a studium generale there.
In 1499 Cardinal Cisneros founded a university in Alcalá, and the town was laid out with regular streets and many colleges. UNESCO calls it the world's first planned university city and the original model for the Civitas Dei, the ideal community that Spanish missionaries took to the Americas. Under the university the Complutensian Polyglot Bible was produced, and it was completed in 1517.
The university later declined, and a royal order of 29 October 1836 moved it to Madrid. A new University of Alcalá was founded in 1977, and the university and historic precinct were inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1998. The town is also the birthplace of Miguel de Cervantes, and every 23 April the King of Spain presents the Cervantes Prize in the university's historic hall.
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