Toledo



Leaving Atocha Station



There are a few easy one-day trips from Madrid and yesterday Chris and I took a train to Toledo.  It wasn't the AVE bullet train; that one we'll take later to Barcelona.  But this was an electric train that is still faster than American ones.  Round trip it takes 35 minutes to go from the Atocha Station in Madrid to the train station in Toledo.  Atocha was the station that was bombed by Al Qaeda in 2004, which became known as "Europe's 9/11".  It was actually ten separate bombings of trains coming in and out of Madrid, two or three of which were actually in the Atocha Station when they detonated..



View from atop the fortifications of Toledo

 Before the Moors took control of Toledo, it had been the capital of (what is more or less) Spain since the 8th century.  The Moors took the city, continued to build upon it, and it was re-taken by the Christian Spaniards in 1085.  It would be almost another 500 years until the capital was moved to Madrid in 1561.  Since Toledo was built on a high rocky point inside a hairpin curve of the Tagus River, it had great natural defenses.  And also because of it's topography, the city remains largely intact today.  Most medival cities lost their original walls as they were dismantled, because they were no longer needed for defenses.  But most of Toledo's original walls are still standing due to the sheer drop-off from the city down to the river; there was simply no way to annex beyond the walls.


The Alcázar



Toledo´s Gothic Cathedral

Toledo has a magnificent (mostly) gothic cathedral that dates to the 12th century.  Chris and I were able to step into the corner of it, get a peek at the architecture and listen to the pipe organ during mass, but we didn't tour the entire building because we would have had to wait until after Mass and once Mass was over, the line was very long to get in.  I've seen plenty of gothic church interiors before, includiong this one, and Chris didn't want to wait. 



The upper courtyard of the Alcázar

 

Bullet pock marks from the war

We also visited the Alcázar, which is Spain's much older version of Westpoint.  The last time I was in Spain, the Alcázar building was still the military academy, but it has since been moved across the river and the historic building is now a military museum.  Under part of it, they excavated away some of the original foundation, which was built on older foundations, which dated to the 8th century.  It is the highest point in Toledo.  While we were in the upper courtyard, we saw bullet pock marks in the stone arches that surround it, put there during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.  Unfortunately, the combatants didn't respect their own historical treasures, and the old fortress was the site of a battle in which much of it was destroyed and later re-built.



Chris in stocks in the dungeon



 We visited the old Jewish Quarter of Toledo and saw a historic synagouge, as well as a Leondardo DaVinci exibit (he lived in Toledo for a while).  In the building that housed the DaVinci exibit, we also toured a dungeon that had been used during the Spanish Inquisition.  I had to get a photo of Chris is stocks inside a cell ...