Toledo 12th June, 2012

Day 2 in Spain, Sarah and I took a tour to Toledo. Another centre of Judaism, pre Inquisition. Leaving the hotel in Madrid at about 8:30 Tuesday morning, we took a coach tour to Toledo. The drive was over an hour and the countryside was not particularly outstanding. In many sections,it felt as though we could have been anywhere including somewhere on the Hume Highway, between Sydney and Melbourne. The terrain is fairly dry, just as you would find in Australia. The only differences of note, were the more numerous small towns along the route, and many abandoned industrial sites, and building sites, possibly as a result of the financial meltdown.
Before the expulsion, Toledo was the capital of Spain and one of the leading centres of Jewry in Spain. At the end of the 14th century, after the Jews had been expelled, eight of the city's 10 synagogues and it's five Talmudic schools were destroyed. The remaining Synagogues were converted into churches. One of those synagogues that remained, the Transito Synaggue, was built in 1357 and is full of Moorish carvings. Two years after the expulsion it became a Catholic Church, and since 1972, a Sephardic Museum, with historic Hebrew inscriptions and a beautiful panelled wooden ceiling. Regretably, although called a "Sephardic Museum", it appears to be run by the church. It was still beautiful to see, and to see the one remaining Magen David still visable high up on one interior wall.

Overlooking Toledo

                        
Santa Maria La Blanca is the other synagogue, but is now empty. Built by Arabs in the 12th century, it looks more like a mosque than a synagogue.

We enjoyed a number of tours through the town and saw other sights including the Iglesia de Santo Tome, a church with a beautiful Mudejar tower, housing El Greco's masterpiece, The Burial of the Count of Orgaz. Also toured the cathedral, built on the site of a Visigoth cathedral and a mosque, this incredible structure is one of the largest cathedrals in Christendom.

One of the other fascinating tours was through the Alcazar, the national army museum, which has been beautifully restored and renovated since the 2nd World War.
Early in the tour we met a couple of Americans, Karen and Doris, and had a "typical" lunch with them in a restaurant overlooking the town. Not bad since it was finished off with a good glass of red wine.
Before heading back to Madrid, our tour stopped at a Toledo foundry, making jewellery, and swords and knives. Toledo was a cetre of armoury development, but today, all that remains, appears to be small scale manufacturing for tourism. We got back to Madrid around 6pm, and took a red bus tour around Madrid city, before eating dinner around 10pm. The normal time for dinner in Spain.