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©Image by Jocelyn Erskine-Kellie on Wikimedia Commons

Walled city of Toledo, the former capital of the Spanish Empire

Located in the center of Spain and barely 70 km from Madrid, the small city of Toledo has an enviable historic walled city center. Founded by the Carpetans in the Bronze Age long before the arrival of the Romans, the walled city of Toledo is one of the most beautiful historic centers in Spain.

It has an immense amount of buildings and constructions in different architectural styles that reflect its long and varied history. The city has been a strategic place for all civilizations that have wanted to control the center of the Iberian Peninsula, due to the defensive nature of its construction.

This fortress is based on the characteristics of the terrain where it is built; on a steep hill fortified by the deep Tagus River, which arches gently at its ford to frame and protect it.

This defensive character, formed by the natural obstacle of the river and the control of the surrounding terrain due to its location on a steep hill, has served as a natural defense since prehistoric times.

Having suffered countless takeovers, conquests and reconquests by different cultures, Toledo finally stands as a tolerant city that understood how to be chosen by the different peoples that inhabited it and knew how to respect their steps, preserving even today important vestiges.

All the peoples that have arrived in the Iberian Peninsula have left the mark of their culture in this city, already defined by the Roman Tito Livio as "parva urbs, sed loco munitia"; a small but well fortified place. Of its prehistoric past hardly any remains are preserved, if compared to more contemporary civilizations.

From Toledo's Roman past it is possible to find several remains, many of them partially unearthed and even dismantled by subsequent civilizations to take advantage of their ashlars and stones in new constructions.

There is evidence, such as the foundations of an aqueduct over the Tagus River, the remains of a circus, an amphitheater and numerous causeways. There are probably many other constructions that are still buried underground.

The so-called City of Three Cultures is a mixture of eras and inhabitants, of cultures and religions; its great heritage and history make it practically unavoidable in any visit to the Iberian Peninsula.

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©Image by Ben Bender from Wikimedia Commons

Detail of a street in the old town of Toledo.

It was the capital of the Visigothic kingdom that ruled the Iberian Peninsula until the 8th century AD, when it was taken by the Muslims and became part of Al-Andalus. Later, in the 11th century AD, the so-called Reconquest gradually expelled the Muslims from the Iberian Peninsula, and Toledo became a Christian kingdom under the rule of Alfonso VI, King of León.

In the first decades of the 16th century it became an Imperial City, for having been the main seat of the court of King Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor during his reign. When his son Philip II succeeded him on the throne, he moved the court to the city of Madrid, initiating a slow decline of the city in favor of the new capital of the Spanish Empire.

The walled city of Toledo was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986. Its monumental heritage is latent after crossing its walls through gates such as Bisagra, Cambrón or Sol.

A labyrinth of immaculately preserved medieval streets, dominated by the impressive variety of buildings from almost every period of Spanish history: Moorish, Gothic, Mudejar, Renaissance, Austrian or Baroque, stretches before the visitor.

The city, with its monumental ensemble, is also known as "the city of three cultures" because it has been inhabited for centuries by Christians, Jews and Muslims. Churches, synagogues and mosques follow one another, often built one on top of the other, in an urban fabric that since ancient times has been able to welcome and contain everyone equally, with fights, rebellions and expulsions that in any case have not been able to avoid the inevitable: the cultural mix of a people.

Military, civil and religious buildings stand in the old town, each with its own architectural style, testifying to centuries of history. The Cathedral of Toledo, from the 13th century and Primate of Spain; the Alcazar, an imposing military building; the Monastery of San Juan de los Reyes, the Mosque of Cristo de la Luz, the Jewish Quarter, the Synagogue of Santa María la Blanca, the Synagogue of El Tránsito, the Church of Santo Tomé, or the bridges of Alcántara and San Martín, are just some of the monuments that populate the fortifications that have seen all the protagonists of the history of Spain.

On the other hand, the cultural richness of the city of Toledo is also reflected in its museums, such as the El Greco Museum, the Santa Cruz Museum or the Army Museum, where important artistic, cultural, religious, social and technical manifestations accumulated over centuries of history are preserved.

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