Leguas to Centimeters (legua to cm)

1 legua (Castilian) equals 557,266.6667 centimeters (rounded).

1 legua (Castilian) = 557,266.6667 centimeters

How to convert leguas to centimeters

To convert leguas to centimeters, multiply the number of leguas by 557,266.6667. The factor is rounded to 10 significant digits. To go the other way, multiply centimeters by 0.000001794473023 (rounded).

centimeters = leguas × 557,266.6667

Example: 10 leguas = 5,572,666.667 centimeters.

Approximate value. Standards for the legua (Castilian) varied by place and period, so this converter uses the most commonly cited value. Treat results as estimates, not exact figures.

About these units

Legua (Castilian) (legua)

Spanish & PortugueseHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)Approximate value

About 5.57 km, equal to 6,666⅔ varas. The standard Spanish league; Portugal and Latin America used different values.

Spanish legua is a descendant of the Roman leuga, itself taken from an older Celtic distance used in Gaul. In medieval Castile it was reckoned as three Spanish miles, so its real length depended on the local foot and on how carefully a road was paced out. A decree of Philip II in 1568 abolished the older legal league of roughly 4.18 km and set the league at about 5.57 km, the figure used here.

That league was fixed at 20,000 Castilian feet, which the Spanish law of 1801 later expressed as 6,666 and two thirds varas. It served for overland travel, for describing the extent of colonial land grants, and, as a square league, for ranch and estate areas in Texas and Mexico. Spanish America never agreed on one value: Mexico used a league of 5,000 varas near 4.19 km, Chile about 4.51 km, and Buenos Aires about 5.15 km.

A later legua nueva of 8,000 varas, close to 6.69 km, was also defined in 1766. Today a Castilian legua is a little under three and a half modern statute miles, and the word survives in place names and in loose speech for a walking hour.

1 legua (Castilian) = 5,572.666667 meters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: League (unit); Wikipedia: Spanish customary units; Wikipedia: Vara (unit)

Centimeter (cm)

Metric (SI)Current unit

One hundredth of a meter. Used for body measurements, clothing and everyday objects.

Scientists, rather than shopkeepers, gave the centimeter its place. In 1832 Carl Friedrich Gauss proposed a system of absolute units built on length, mass and time, choosing the millimeter, milligram and second. In 1873 a committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, whose members included James Clerk Maxwell and William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), recommended the centimeter, gram and second instead. That CGS system dominated physics for decades, until the metre-kilogram-second system replaced it in the mid-twentieth century and led to SI.

CGS units proved awkward for rooms and buildings, which run to hundreds of centimeters, but the centimeter itself never went away. It is still the everyday unit for height, clothing and small objects, and it appears in map scales and rainfall reports. An adult fingernail is roughly one centimeter wide, and a milliliter is defined as exactly one cubic centimeter. An inch is exactly 2.54 centimeters. The CGS system itself survives mainly in theoretical physics and astrophysics, where Gaussian units are still common.

1 centimeter = 0.01 meters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Centimetre-gram-second system of units; Wikipedia: Centimetre; NIST Guide to the SI, Appendix B.8: conversion factors

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