Segovia, Spain
I could begin the story of our trip to Spain with a tale of woe, the highlights of which would include misadventures in an Irish airport, lost luggage, missed flights, re-booked trains, excursions, and rental cars. I could recount moments that would make you cringe or feel that same don’t do that! feeling you get during a horror movie when you see the girl walking into a house that everyone knows she shouldn’t enter. Such stories would provoke in you the deepest sympathy for what happened to us en route to Madrid, and you’d probably shake your head and say, “those poor souls.”
Nah. I’ll leave the first twenty-four hours of our trip to Spain shrouded in mystery, and instead, I’ll zoom in on a beautiful morning in Madrid, six hours of sleep under our belts, and train tickets to Segovia in our hands.
Segovia lies just north of Spain’s capital city Madrid, a short thirty-minute train ride into the Spanish countryside. Tourists (like us) regularly select Segovia as a day-trip from Madrid not only due to its convenience, but also because it boasts three particularly spectacular sights: the Alcazar of Segovia, the Catedral of Segovia, and the Roman Aqueduct.
Like the rest of Spain, Segovia’s history is a rich mix of Roman, Moorish, and Catholic heritage, the three of which are so clearly woven into the fabric of the town. Our early start landed us in Segovia around 8:30am—very early for this little Spanish city—and absolutely no one was stirring. We crossed under the Roman aqueduct just as the sun crept over the Guadarrama mountains to drench it with morning light.
Awash in the glow of ancient lights and suspended in the silence of a still-slumbering city, the aqueduct brought us back in time. We snapped a few photos, the shutter of our camera the only noise disturbing the peace of the morning, and watched the sun creep higher in the sky.
It is hard not to marvel at the architecture of this centuries-old structure. Built in the first or second century CE, the aqueduct used to deliver potable water to the Romans in ancient times.
The first café to open its doors that morning was one that soon became a familiar face—Cien Montaditos—a place that Matt, who studied in Spain for three months when he was 19, remembers fondly for its dirt-cheap montaditos, or sandwiches. We enjoyed toast with marmalade and orange juice under the aqueduct.
Segovia, like many smaller Spanish towns, is a labyrinth of homes, businesses, and places of worship strung together with narrow cobblestone-lined roads emptying out into large, open plazas. Baskets of bright pink flowers line windows, nuns wander the streets carrying ropes of fresh bread, formidable wooden doors lead to secret gardens, and street signs are set in colorful tiles plastered on the sides of yellow adobe buildings.
We set off to explore this maze-like city, in search of the famous Alcazar of Segovia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In Spanish, an alcazar is equivalent to a palace, and this alcazar is especially palatial. It is helpful to understand some Spanish history to truly appreciate this building. As I noted above, the Roman conquest of Iberia lasted began in 206 B.C. and lasted until around AD 409. Rome created a united Spain, and Latin is the basis of Spanish. In AD 711, a mixture of Arabs and Berbers from Africa arrived in Spain, bringing the country under Moorish control (known as Al Andalus). As the Christian kingdoms of Spain united under the marriage of Fernando (heir to Aragon) and Isabel (heir to Castilla), the Spanish Inquisition developed to identify non-Christians, and the Catholic kings and queens eventually drove out the Moors in 1492.
This Alcazar of Segovia finds its place in the early history of these Catholic kings and queens, around AD 1120. Most notably, it was within the walls of this alcazar that Queen Isabel promised Christopher Columbus the financial backing to explore America.
Many liken the Alcazar of Segovia to the Disney castle, and we definitely spotted the semblances here.
The Alcazar was closed for a private event the day we visited, but we enjoyed walking around its walls and admiring the terraces and towers.
From the Alcazar’s plaza, we also took in views of Segovia’s Roman Catholic Cathedral, also known as the “lady of Cathedrals.” It was consecrated in 1768 and built in the Gothic style of the sixteenth century.
As we wound our way back through the city, we hopped into the Cathedral for a tour of its sanctuary, chapels (all 18 of them), and courtyard, which still made use of a well in the middle for extracting water. As Catholics ourselves, we were especially taken with a beautiful silver and gold processional chariot used for the purposes of parading the body of Christ in the streets.
After a quick lunch of tapas (small plates designed for sharing, and is a very traditional and popular Spanish meal), we walked further into the depths of town to explore the Jewish Quarter, exploring the synagogues, museums, and buildings of an ancient district nestled within the city’s fortified Roman walls.
Our journey through the Jewish Quarter led us past the Alcazar and into a steep, walled garden with a stairway descending to the base of the cliff on which the Alcazar was built.
The trek down was spectacular—sweeping views of the Spanish countryside peppered with exuberant red poppies, breezy green olive trees, and the bell towers of ancient churches, all glazed over in warm, hazy yellow of a Spanish sun. Seeing the rustic simplicity of this landscape, its scorching sun, russet hills, flashes of color, and whitewashed houses made me feel like I was reading a passage out of Frederico Garcia Lorca’s La Casa de Bernarda Alba or Bodas de Sangre.
As we entered the garden, we passed by the entrance to a cave that had been carved out under the cliff side, and we welcomed the chill of the air as we passed by. At the bottom of the hill, we wandered into the town below, stopping to take photographs of the monasteries and churches in the valley below.
Finally, we reached El Mirador de La Pradera de San Marcos, a lookout point where we took these photos of the Alcazar from below.
We had the most fun when we trekked all the way to the base of the cliff, where el Rio Eresma converges with other waterways to create a moat through the underbrush. Murder holes gleamed at us from above and dungeons poked out from the cliff side to create a truly impenetrable fortress.
