"Santo Domingo de la Calzada" Santo Domingo de la Calzada by tim76

Santo Domingo de la Calzada is another stop on the Camino de Santiago. It has very strong connections with the pilgrimage, as it's the burial place of the saint after which the town is named. This saint devoted his life to helping pilgrims, for example by building roads and bridges (calzada is Spanish for causeway).

Gothic cage with chicken and rooster

An interesting story is associated with Santo Domingo: in the 14th century a young German pilgrim was falsely accused of theft and condemned to the gallows. The saint saves the boy and when his parents come to his body, they find him still alive.
While he's having dinner a magistrate hears about this and says: "that boy is as dead as this rooster and chicken that I was eating." At that moment the birds jump up from his plate and fly away.
To this day a chicken and a rooster are kept in the cathedral to commemorate the miracle.

• In a nutshell:Chickens in a church!