Standardised Castilian vara
Vara castellana normalizada
- Date
- 1568 · confidence medium
- Place
- Burgos, Castile and León, Spain
- Credited to
- Crown of Castile (Philip II)
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A length measure of about 83.6 cm, divided into three feet, whose Burgos form was imposed by a pragmatic of Philip II as the standard for the whole kingdom of Castile. It spread to the Americas and was the unit of trade and land measurement until the adoption of the metric system.
Unification is attributed to Philip II (1568), but earlier Alfonsine rules (Cortes of Seville, 1261) already sought a standard; the Burgos vara competed with that of Toledo. The exact value (0.8359 m) was fixed in the 19th century.
What it led to
- measurement of land and cloth in the Hispanic Monarchy and the Americas
- measuring rods in the colonies until the 19th century
- antecedent of Spain's 1849 metric reform