Kit had asked us to visit Segovia and we are glad she did. When she asked I didn’t even know where it was located in Spain, but it turns out it is just a little northwest of Madrid. It should have taken less than 2 hours to go from Toledo to Segovia, but we also forgot that today is labor day in Europe. So we ran into very heavy traffic as a large part of the population of Madrid was heading out of town. It was also raining heavily so I was a little worried about how our day would turn out.
Our taxi dropped us off at the base of one of the main attractions in Segovia the Roman aqueduct. It is an amazing structure. Built around 100 AD it covers 17 kilometers from springs near the mountains to the town. The aqueduct as it passes thru the town has over 168 arches. It is one of the best preserved Roman aqueducts in the world and is a beautiful feat of engineering.
Stephen and I spent a lot of time looking at the cut of the stones and how the arches were built. The precision of the work is astounding to me given the limits of the tools available then. The Romans were really incredible builders.
We next walked to the 12th century Cathedral near the center of town. I have been pleased to find that there seems to be more variation in the design of Spanish Cathedrals than you find in other parts of Europe. They seem more creative, and designed to fit more into the terrain and cityscape rather than imposing themselves on the land and city.
The third major building in Segovia is the Alcazar. The Alcazar was built on a cliff on one end of the town that overlooks the river below the town. There has been a fort on this site since the Romans, but the building that became the Alcazar was started by the Moslem rulers of Segovia in the 900’s.
When Segovia was reconquered by the Christian kings of Spain it became a fortress and castle for the kings. The royalty of this part of Spain occupied the castle until the late 1700’s.
The walls and ceiling retain a lot of the geometric patterns that are featured in Islamic art. In some rooms you can see where Christian art has been integrated into the Islamic art.
The views from the castle are fantastic. You can see for miles in three directions from the platforms on the castle. You can also see many of the quarry’s that were used to produce all of the stone necessary to build the town and the castle.
In the late 1700’s the castle was converted into the Spanish army artillery school. The museum includes a lot of artillery pieces from the era of the artillery school and I had a good time looking at them.
Segovia and Toledo while very different from each other are both beautiful cities. Apparently, there is a lot of discussion about which city is the most beautiful. Stephen and I talked about this and we decided that they were both more or less equal, so why worry and just enjoy seeing both.
The rain had stopped just as we arrived in Segovia, and the afternoon was perfect. We walked back across the town one more time doing a little shopping and looking for a place to eat. Our timing was wrong as we forgot that dinner time in Spain is quite late. The restaurants we wanted to visit were all closed to 7 or 8 pm. We eventually decided to eat at the campground and Kit and Ton cooked up a great meal.
