Toledo

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Toledo municipality
View of Toledo with the Alcázar and the cathedral
View of Toledo with the Alcázar and the cathedral
coat of arms Map of Spain
Toledo coat of arms
Toledo (Spain)
Finland road sign 311 (1994-2020) .svg
Basic data
Autonomous Community : Castile-La Mancha
Province : Toledo
Coordinates 39 ° 52 ′  N , 4 ° 2 ′  W Coordinates: 39 ° 52 ′  N , 4 ° 2 ′  W
Height : 454  msnm
Area : 232.1 km²
Residents : 84,873 (Jan 1, 2019)
Population density : 365.67 inhabitants / km²
Postal code : 45001-45009
Municipality number  ( INE ): 45168
administration
Mayor : Milagros Tolón Jaime (PSOE)
Website : www.toledo.es

Toledo ( Spanish [ toˈleðo ]) is the capital of the Spanish province of Toledo and the autonomous region of Castile-La Mancha and is located 65 km south-southwest of Madrid on the Tagus River . The city had 84,873 inhabitants on January 1, 2019 and is the seat of the Archdiocese of Toledo . Together with Segovia and Ávila , it is one of the three historical metropolises in the vicinity of the Spanish capital Madrid.

geography

Toledo lies about 100 meters above the banks of the Tagus River, which meanders deeply into the rocks of the plateau of the South Meseta , and dominates the river crossing, which is now represented by a medieval bridge.

Climate table

Toledo
Climate diagram
J F. M. A. M. J J A. S. O N D.
 
 
26th
 
12
1
 
 
25th
 
14th
3
 
 
23
 
18th
5
 
 
39
 
20th
7th
 
 
44
 
24
11
 
 
24
 
31
16
 
 
7th
 
35
19th
 
 
9
 
34
19th
 
 
18th
 
29
15th
 
 
48
 
22nd
10
 
 
39
 
16
5
 
 
41
 
12
3
Temperature in ° C ,  precipitation in mm
Source: Agencia Estatal de Meteorología, normal period 1981-2010
Average monthly temperatures and rainfall for Toledo
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Max. Temperature ( ° C ) 11.5 14.0 18.1 19.9 24.2 30.5 34.6 34.0 29.0 22.1 15.6 11.6 O 22.1
Min. Temperature (° C) 1.3 2.6 5.0 7.2 11.0 15.9 18.9 18.6 14.9 10.2 5.3 2.5 O 9.5
Temperature (° C) 6.4 8.3 11.6 13.5 17.6 23.2 26.8 26.3 22.0 16.1 10.5 7.1 O 15.8
Precipitation ( mm ) 26th 25th 23 39 44 24 7th 9 18th 48 39 41 Σ 343
Hours of sunshine ( h / d ) 4.9 6.1 7.4 8.3 9.2 11.2 12.3 11.3 8.7 6.8 5.2 4.1 O 8th
Rainy days ( d ) 4.9 4.7 3.9 6.4 6.4 2.9 1.0 1.5 2.9 6.8 5.9 6.3 Σ 53.6
Humidity ( % ) 76 69 59 58 54 45 39 41 51 66 74 79 O 59.2
T
e
m
p
e
r
a
t
u
r
11.5
1.3
14.0
2.6
18.1
5.0
19.9
7.2
24.2
11.0
30.5
15.9
34.6
18.9
34.0
18.6
29.0
14.9
22.1
10.2
15.6
5.3
11.6
2.5
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
N
i
e
d
e
r
s
c
h
l
a
g 		26th
25th
23
39
44
24
7th
9
18th
48
39
41
  Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

City structure

The city of Toledo is divided into 16 districts (barrios) : Antequeruela, Azucaica, Benquerencia, Buenavista, Casco histórico, Cigarrales, Monte Sión - San Bernardo, Olivilla, Palomarejos, Pinedo, Salto del Caballo, San Antón, Santa Bárbara, Santa Teresa, Valparaiso and Vistahermosa. The districts of Antequeruela and Casco histórico form the historic city center within the city walls.

Districts such as Santa Clara and Santa Isabel are located within the historic city center.

Attractions

and display information about the image
Toledo panoramic view

The old town with the Cathedral of Santa María from the 13th to 15th centuries and the Alcázar from the 16th century as well as numerous other churches, a monastery and museums were added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in December 1986 . The former Hospital de Santa Cruz from the 15th / 16th centuries. Century near the Alcázar has been converted into a museum.

The Puente de Alcántara over the Tagus has served as the main entrance to the city since Roman times and was supplemented in the late Middle Ages by the Puente de San Martín , whose five pointed arches span up to 40 meters.

Also worth seeing are two of the few remaining medieval synagogues , El Tránsito and Santa María la Blanca , which were used as churches after the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. At the church of San Juan de los Reyes you can still admire the chains of those who were released from the slavery into which the Berberesques fell. Also worth mentioning is the small church of El Cristo de la Luz , which was built as a mosque in the late 10th century . An imposing city gate is the Puerta Nueva de Bisagra, built around 1550 with a large imperial coat of arms on the outside; the Puerta Vieja de Bisagra from the 9th century, spanned by a horseshoe arch , is in the immediate vicinity.

  • Toledo seen from the Parador

  • Toledo Cathedral

  • Side corridor of the cathedral

  • The Plaza de Zocodover after the most famous Corpus Christi celebration in Spain

  • The current Santa Cruz Museum

  • The Puerta de Bisagra in Toledo

  • Gargoyle in the shape of a bagpiper , Claustro de San Juan de los Reyes

  • Puente de San Martín

Museums and collections

The city where El Greco settled in 1577 has a significant repertoire of paintings by the Cretan artist, which are distributed in various museums and churches. Among these is the Santa Cruz Museum which houses a valuable repertoire of paintings by El Greco. They represent practically the entire development of the artist in Toledo, from his first years in the city ( La Verónica con la Santa Faz , 1580) to shortly before his death in 1614. There are also paintings by artists from the 15th to 17th centuries Century, such as Nicolás Francés, Maestro de Sijena, Pieter Coecke , Francisco de Comontes, Juan Correa de Vivar , Luis Tristán , Gaspar de Crayer , Vicente Carducho and Juan Bautista Morgen. The El Greco Museum displays relevant paintings by El Greco. The Council and Culture Museum in the Church of San Román houses Romanesque paintings from the 13th century and an important collection of originals and replicas of Visigoth goldsmiths and other archaeological finds from the 6th to 18th centuries.

The Sephardic Museum Museo Sefardí is located in the El Tránsito synagogue, which was built in 1357 by order of the founder Don Samuel ha-Levi Abulafia , a finance minister under Peter I of Castile , in what was then the Jewish quarter .

The Roberto Polo Collection Museum is a center for modern and contemporary art in Castile-La Mancha and opened on March 27, 2019, it is managed by the Roberto Polo Collection Fundation, an institution of public interest that also has residencies for artists and Art historians and studios should set up. This museum is one of the few in the world that was explicitly created by a government to house a private collection. The San Clemente Cultural Center hosts temporary exhibitions of contemporary art.

history

Toletum - the Toledo of the Romans and Visigoths

The Alcantara Bridge in Toledo (heliography from 1889)
Two-handed long sword from the Spanish swordsmith city of Toledo

The first permanent settlement in the urban area was a series of castles from the time of the Celtiberians . At Cerro del Bú , well-known archaeological finds of the city walled Toledo were made, which are presented in the Museo de Santa Cruz in Toledo. In 192 BC The Roman general M. Fulvius Nobilior subjugated the settlement against fierce resistance from the shepherd tribe of the Carpetani who settled here and founded the outpost of Toletum . Due to its iron ore deposits, Toledo developed into an important settlement that minted its own coins. Numerous villas, the remains of which have been excavated, testify to a radical Romanization of the settlement, which was crowned by an aqueduct , which has now been completely destroyed.

Since the first barbarian invasions, the ancient walls have been reinforced for defensive purposes. In 411 the Alans briefly conquered the city. In the later 5th century it was conquered by the Visigoths . From around 531 to 711 Toledo was the capital of the Visigoth Empire , who made the city the seat of an Arian archbishopric. In 589 their king converted to Catholicism . During this period of late late antiquity , the city experienced a re-bloom. Its civil and religious significance is underlined by the fact that a total of 18 councils met here between 400 and 702 , including the fourth of 633 under the direction of the famous encyclopedist Isidore of Seville .

Ṭulayṭula - Toledo as part of al-Andalus'

The Moors conquered the capital of the Visigoth Empire in 712. Toledo experienced its heyday at the time of the Moors' rule as Ṭulayṭula (طليطلة) during the Caliphate of Cordoba and as the capital of the Taifa of the Ḏū n-Nūnids until the conquest by Alfonso VI. on May 25, 1085 (see also Reconquista ).

The primacy of the Iberian Church

In 1088, only a few years after the Christian conquest of Toledo in 1085, the Archbishop Bernard of Toledo obtained confirmation from Pope Urban II that Toledo should have the "primatus in totis Hispaniarum regnis" (primacy in all kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula). But it was only more than a century later that one of his successors, the historian Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada , Archbishop of Toledo from 1209 until his death in 1247, succeeded in tying this title to Toledo. The Archbishop of Toledo is now the primate of the Catholic Church in Spain and for a long time was one of the most powerful prince-bishops in Spain, who had his own troops in the Middle Ages and participated in the Reconquista , but also in other military campaigns of the Spanish kings (e.g. in North Africa) own soldiers involved.

Toledo was considered a stronghold of the armory (Toledo steel). The Roman troops were supplied with swords from Toledo and Emperor Charles V (1500–1558) also had his swords made there. During Muslim rule the forge developed a special technique of blades ornament by swaged in place on previously roughened steel surfaces fine gold wires and cut ornament parts made of thin steel plate and were subsequently chased with fine punches.

Toledo became an important center for the translation of Arabic scripts in the 12th and 13th centuries, thanks to the coexistence of different high-level languages ​​(Standard Arabic, Hebrew, Latin) and vernacular languages ​​(Arabic-Andalusian, Romansh-Castilian) and the multilingualism of the Mozarabic and Jewish population in particular into Latin and Romansh and thereby played a decisive role in the dissemination of Arabic philosophy and science and its ancient Greek sources in Europe.

After the conquest by the Christian troops under Alfonso VI. Toledo became the residence of the Kingdom of Castile in 1087 and remained the capital of Spain until 1561. Philip II moved his residence to Madrid , 71 km away , which is geographically almost exactly in the center of the Iberian Peninsula and approximately at the same distance from all the more distant port cities.

During the Spanish Civil War , Toledo was the scene of the siege of the Alcázar .

Number of inhabitants
year 1991 1996 2001 2004 2014
Residents 59,000 66 006 68 382 73 485 83 334

Personalities

  • Garcilaso de la Vega (* 1503 in Toledo; † October 14, 1536 in Nice, France), was a Spanish general and poet under Charles V.
El Greco: View of Toledo (around 1608)

Town twinning

literature

  • Hannah Lynch: Toledo . London: Dent, 1898.
  • Albert Frederick Calvert: Toledo. An historical and descriptive account of the City of Generations . London: Lane, 1907.
  • Rufino Miranda: Toledo. About art and history. Toledo: Cruz, 2000. ISBN 84-87318-05-3 .
  • Isabel del Rio de la Hoz: The Cathedral and City of Toledo . National Monuments of Spain. Scala Publishers, 2006. ISBN 978-1-85759-212-2 .
  • Tobias Rütenik: Transformations from mosques to churches in Toledo. In: Contributions to Islamic Art and Archeology , Vol. 2, Ed. Markus Ritter and Lorenz Korn, Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2010, pp. 37–59. ISBN 978-3-89500-766-8 .

Web links

Commons : Toledo  - album with pictures, videos and audio files
Wikivoyage: Toledo  Travel Guide

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cifras oficiales de población resultantes de la revisión del Padrón municipal a 1 de enero . Population statistics from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística (population update).
  2. ↑ Barrios de Toledo ( Memento of the original from August 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on April 28, 2010) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mitoledo.com
  3. ↑ City map ( Memento of the original from September 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.educa.madrid.org
  4. ↑ Area25 IT- www.area25.es: Museum Santa Cruz - Toledo: information, prices, tickets, directions, telephone, opening times, map, photos, books and guides, guided tours and tours. Retrieved November 20, 2019 .
  5. ↑ a b Carmen Betegon, et al .: Musei ebraici in Europe - orientamenti e prospettive . Ed .: Franco Bonilauri, Vicenza Maugeri. Electa, Milano 1998, ISBN 88-435-6625-3 , p. 32-35 .
  6. ↑ Home. Retrieved November 20, 2019 (American English).