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View of Toledo by El Greco

Toledo is a city that once visited, never ceases to rest in the imagination. To the Spaniards, it is a symbol of endurance and patriotism, and the cry, 'The Alcazar will never surrender!' To the foreign tourist, Toledo is hot sun and slanting alleys, the harsh angularity of El Greco and the mystique of the Jewish quarter.

As an unnamed Spanish official once pointed out, 'Forty years we had a population of about forty thousand. Today we have the same. And forty years from now it will still be the same, unless we build skyscrapers. For we have used up our rock,' Toledo is small but crammed with people and history, riddled with tiny cobbled alleys that echo with thousands of years of footprints. Using a car to get around is ridiculous, and public transportation scarcely less so. An energetic tourist, preferably with a temper not easily lost after being faced with countless nameless sidestreets and inadequate maps, would do best to walk. Toledo, characterized by narrow alleys and steep climbs, is not a city designed for the aging tourist. However, without argument, Toledo's benefits make the effort worthwhile.

Toledo from a distance seems like the recreation in city form of one of El Greco's paintings: tall, angular, handsome, and a little bloodless. Chosen as capital by the Visigothic kings, a center of rebellion under Moorish rule, Toledo returned to being the center of Spain as the Christians slowly expelled the Moors in the Reconquest, and remained capital till the move to Madrid in the 16th century. It lies on a hill in the midst of a desert plain, surrounded on three sides by the deep gorge of the Tagus River and on the fourth by the Sagra Plain. It was a city in a location designed against conquest, as the Romans who first subjugated it ruefully recorded. But hundreds of years of living in close proximity will force even the worst of enemies to learn to coexist and this is what one sees in Toledo: mosque beside synagogue beside cathedral, all of their styles intermingling. There are Arabic designs on the doorway of the cathedral's sacristy, and in the synagogue El Transito an inscription can be seen that glorifies the Hebrew God, King Pedro the Cruel, and Samuel Levi all in the same swirl. Roman ruins lie by Visigothic cathedrals with a judicious smattering of Arabic influence and some of the most impressive synagogues in Spain. No other Spanish city can claim the same degree of intercultural splendor.

Perhaps this is what attracted the city's most famous painter, the Cretan-born, Italian-trained El Greco. Although Greek, even the notoriously partisan Spaniards claim him as one of the great artists of Spain. In his thirties and relatively unknown when he came to Toledo, the inspiration he found here served to create some of the most striking and unforgettable murals ever painted. The entire city seems to be decorated by his hand alone: rare is the museum or church that does not boast at least one El Greco. Most famous is 'The Burial of Count Orgaz', found in the church of Santo Tome.

For the more practical-minded tourist, Toledo is famous for more than the dust of history and artistry and architecture. The swords and damascene of the city were renowned throughout the ancient world, and make pretty and unique gifts for friends back home. Pottery is scarcely less well-known. The gourmet will appreciate Toledan pheasant and the incomparable marzipan.

Manuel CossiŃ once said that if a traveler had only one day in Spain, he should spend it without question in seeing Toledo. Experiencing the melange of monuments of every culture ever native to Spain, and the austere enchantment of its history overlaid with artistry, one does not merely understand but wholeheartedly agrees.