Santander is located on the benign side of a wide peninsula of rolling hills, on the coastal rim by the cantabrian mounts, the mountain chain along the northern Spanish coast. Historically this was the traditional gate to the sea for the northern Castilian plateau.

The urban shape is marked by the elevation, the harbor and the attractive of the Sardinero beach, whose historical vacation houses remind an era in which the summer heat was run from by going towards freshness, not sun. Nowadays climate change is making the local climate closer to the Mediterranean one.

Santander. Braun 1575