The City of Three Cultures — Moorish, Jewish, and Christian layered in one hilltop labyrinth
Toledo is one of Spain's most historically layered cities — an ancient hilltop walled by the Tagus river that served successively as Visigothic capital, Muslim city-state, Reconquista prize, and Habsburg royal seat. El Greco lived here for 37 years and his paintings hang in the churches and chapels he used as backdrops. Within the medieval walls are a Gothic cathedral, Europe's best-preserved Sephardic synagogues, a mosque-turned-church, and one of Spain's finest Alcázars.
Toledo was the capital of the Visigoth Kingdom of Hispania for nearly two centuries before the Muslim conquest of 711. Under Islamic rule as Tulaytula it thrived as a polyglot city of Christians, Jews, and Muslims — the famous School of Translators made it Europe's conduit for classical Greek and Arabic knowledge in the 12th and 13th centuries. Alfonso VI reconquered the city in 1085; its Jewish quarter remained intact until the 1391 pogroms. Carlos V chose Toledo as the imperial capital and built the Alcázar; Philip II moved the court to Madrid in 1561, preserving Toledo in a kind of archite…