Holy Toledo!

I arrived in Toledo at 12:45 pm, on the day of the Corpus Christi procession. I arrived too late to see the procession but just in time to wade through the throngs of people from all over Spain, filling the haphazardly organized and tiny medieval streets.

Toledo is a maddening yet quaint and cozy city, but I hadn’t yet gotten lost enough times to recognize any of the buildings which meant that I did not know how to get to my hotel any other way than to walk along the side of the cathedral which, upon my arrival, was blocked by the faithful.  This did not prevent me from trying to find an alternate route and, in the end, it took me longer to find my hotel from the Plaza de Zocodovar than it had taken me to get to Toledo from Madrid. Start with the goal of getting lost and Toledo will not disappoint.

Toledo was, for a long time, the spiritual and political capital of of a Christian Spain. Monuments to power abound: official buildings converted to serve the Catholic Kings, city gates updated to display royal crests, Catholic churches built on previously Muslim and Jewish sites.

King Felipe II moved the government to Madrid in 1561, in part to weaken the power of the Church but Toledo, with its heavy concentration of churches, has remained a holy destination.

There are many explanations about the origins of the phrase “Holy Toledo,” and many pop culture references, most notably in the television series M.A.S.H., but in Spain “Holy Toledo” is simply a description of a city.

Toledo has roots in three cultures and three faiths, and these roots remain in the language, in the food, and, notably, in the architecture.

Mezquita Cristo de Luz

Sinagoga Santa Maria la Blanco

La Sinagoga del Tránsito