When we visited Europe four years ago, I planned for us to spend a day in Toledo, but we ended up going to Segovia instead. A fast-speed train linking Madrid and Toledo was built in 2005--more than ten years after I left Spain. I don't think I realized that when we visited four years ago. We were thrilled that Gerardo and Gimena joined us.
"Toletum" was occupied by Carpetanis, when the Roman historian Livy (who died in 17 AD) described it as "small city, fortified by location," on the hilly banks of the Tagus river (visible in the photo above).
The Romans made Toletum a tributary city of non-citizens, and, by the end of the first century, it achieved the official status of "municipium." Thereafter, city walls, public baths, and a water supply and storage system were built.
In Roman times, Toletum was best known as the site of one of the largest chariot-race tracks on the continent, which could accommodate up to 15,000 spectators.
The modern name for the bridge derives from the Arabic word for arch: "al-qanţarah."
The name is from Arabic al-qaṣr 'the castle' (ultimately, from Latin "castrum").
In 1521, Carlos V received Hernán Cortés there following Cortes' destruction of the Aztecs. Carlos V and Felipe II ordered its restoration in the 1540s.
This part of the building's history make it an appealing place to visit. But the Alcazar is now the site of an Army museum. I read a lot about how it became a Fascist shrine in the years following the Spanish Civil War due to fabricated propaganda about the rebel Spanish commander who controlled the fortress during a two-month siege and willingly sacrificed the life of his son to the Republicans rather than surrender. When Franco's Army of Africa captured Toledo in August 1936, the siege was lifted. During World War II, Himmler and other Nazis visited for the photo-ops. Yech.
We didn't stop by to pay our respects.
In the Middle Ages, the Alcántara bridge was one of the few entrances for pilgrims into the city.
After leading an army out of Toledo to confront the Moorish invasion that was launched by Tariq ibn-Ziyad in 711, the Visigoth king Ruderic was killed in battle, after being betrayed by other Visigothic nobles who wanted someone else in power and did not consider the invaders to be a serious threat.
Ibn-Ziyad's army conquered Toledo after Ruderic's fall. Under the Muslims, the city, Ṭulayṭulah, was demoted in power and prestige and ruled from Cordoba.
Looking through the first Baroque gate at the eastern end of the Alcántara bridge in the photo above, you can see the horseshoe arch of the Alcántara Gate, built in the 900s, when the city was under Muslim control.
According to my good friends at Wikipedia, when Alfonso VI of Castilla conquered Toledo on May 24, 1085, it was first time a major city in Al-Andalus was captured by Christian forces.
The layout of the streets reminded me of medinas I have explored in Morocco.
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Above: Entrance to the Museo de Santa Cruz. The building, once a hospital, was constructed in the 1500s.
The "new Monarchs" refers to the House of Trastámara, which was launched when Henry the II became king in 1369 and ruled until 1379. His grandson, Henry the III, ruled between 1390 and 1407. Henry the III (buried here with his wife and his parents) was the grandfather of Queen Isabella, who married Fernando and united Castilla and Aragon.
The nave of the church is 13 stories high, making it a kind of inverse canyon of human artistry and imagination.
Our audio guides told us that the doors at either end of the Cathedral's transept (the horizontal in the Cathedral's cross-model floorplan) used to remain open so that people needing to go from one side of the cathedral to the other on normal everyday business could walk straight through instead of walking all the way around the building, which is as long as a football field.
As mentioned in an earlier post, Brecht reminds us that the great monolithic constructions attributed to kings were pressed out of the bodies of generations of laborers, and, in that sense, you could say that Pyramids and Gothic cathedrals are monuments to the power some wealthy humans have to make others obey their commands. (That's one reason why I wince at the beauty of antebellum homes in the American South, which were constructed by, maintained by, and dedicated to the institution of slavery.) But part of Brecht's point is that we should give credit where credit is due and honor the collective authorship of these landscape-altering constructions. And if humans are going to engage in massive collective labors, I see more value in the construction of Cathedrals or Pyramids, than in the assembly of armies that produce corpse-strewn battlefields or factory networks producing commodities that are purchased, consumed, and quickly discarded onto the trash heap.
Imagine the pre-Modern traveler who walks out of the fresh-air market through a veil of incense into this massive amusement park of architecture, painting, and theatrical light design.
And then in the 18th century, earth-shaking organ music is added to the ride.
No doubt some are moved by this immersive, multi-sensory, neck-craning cinematic experience to marvel at the grandeur of God or the Church. Others may marvel at the capacities of collective human imagination and enterprise.
The featured painting in the sacristry of the Cathedral (where church functionaries add and remove their vestments before and after mass) is "The Disrobing of Christ" (1579) by El Greco. The subject of the painting refers to the removal of Jesus's tunic before he is crucified.
In 1698, Carlos II invited Luca Giordano to paint a fresco on the barrel vault above.
The room is also circled by portaits El Greco painted of the apostles.
After leaving the Cathedral, we lunched at Tulaytula, a Mediterranean restaurant (Gerardo and Gime's treat). I enjoyed my harira soup (tomato soup with noodles, chickpeas, celery and onions), but I liked Nina's veggie kabsa with raisins over basmati rice even more.
One of the reasons we came to Toledo was to visit la iglesia de Santo Tome, where El Greco's "Entierro del Conde de Orgaz" (1586) is hung, but after arriving we learned that la iglesia is closed on Tuesdays.
Next on our to-see list were the medieval mosques and synagogues that are still standing in the city.
One story that gets told about Toledo is that the Christians who took over the city did not pillage its Arab libraries, allowing Muslim and Jewish scholars in the Toledo School of Translators to translate great academic and philosophical works in Arabic and Hebrew into Spanish, and those texts were subsequently translated into Latin. Partly for this reason, Toledo was a major cultural center under the leadership of Alfonso X (1254-1284), called "El Sabio" ("the Wise").
Another story that gets told about Toledo is that there were multiple persecutions (633, 653, 693) and stake burnings of Jews (638 CE) during the Visigothic era, when Jews were flogged, executed, had their property confiscated, were subjected to ruinous taxes, forbidden to trade and, at times, dragged to the baptismal font.
Although the Muslim era was characterized by violent uprisings and betrayals among its leaders, the persecution of religious minorities stopped.
But there were further persecutions during the later Christian era, including forced conversions and mass murder of Toledo's Jews in 1212 and burnings in 1368, 1391, 1449, 1486–1490 CE.
We hoped to visit the ab-al-Mardum mosque, built in 999 . The small mosque has largely maintained its original architectual form in large part because it was transformed into a church in 1085 (after Alfonso VI conquered Toledo for Christendom). It was not demolished, as Toledo's main mosque was, so that the city's Cathedral could be built.
The next site on our to-see list was the ibn Shushan Synagogue, built in 1080, shortly before Alfonso VI's conquest of Toledo. The ibn-Shushan Synagogue claims to be the oldest, still-standing synagogue building in Europe. It was converted to a church in the 1390s, and it, too, was closed on Tuesdays.
The next site on our to-see list was the Synagogue of Samuel ha-Levi, which was built in 1357 and converted into a church after Fernando and Isabel kicked the Jews out of Spain in 1492. Today it is the Sephardi Museum, and we were just able to visit it before we had to make a quick dash to catch our train back to Madrid.
With so many of our destination sites closed for the day, we had plenty of time for street wandering.
Above and below: brothers and sisters in front of Toledo's Puerta del Sol, built in the late 1300s. The medallion above the arch depicts the ordination of the Visigothic Hildefuns, the patron saint of the city, who died in 667.
Back in Madrid: churros on the street near the Atocha train station before heading back to the house for carioca at the kitchen table.
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