Museo das Peregrinacións

The next day, we first went to the Museo das Peregrinacións, a museum devoted to the Camino de Santiago tradition that has existed over the centuries. The Camino stretches from southern France, across the northern part of Spain, until you reach Santiago de Compostela. It is an 800 km track, but you can tell that many people make the trip each year, denoted by the scallop shell that pilgrims have attached to their bags.

Legend has it that the corpse of Santiago Apóstol (St. James) was brought to Santiago de Compostela in a boat made of stone from the Holy Land by two disciples around AD 44. Later, in 813, the grave of St. James was rediscovered by a religious hermit following a star, hence the name “Compostela,” from the Latin campus stellae, meaning, “field of the star.” His reported grave became a symbol of Christian Spain, so king Alfonso II constructed a church above the holy remains. To make a long story short, pilgrims began flocking to the site, and so the tradition was started.