Toledo has a population of just over 80,000. city inhabitants in central Spain. Its Old Town is located on a hill in the bend of the Tagus River and is surrounded by city walls. The buildings mainly come from the medieval period, and the city is also famous as the birthplace of the painter El Greco.
The settlement on the site of today's Toledo already existed in antiquity. From the 5th century the city was under the rule of the Visigoths and was the most important religious center of Spain. Synods were held here, and the local bishop is still the primate of Spain. From the 8th to the 11th centuries, Toledo was, like much of the country, in the hands of the Moors and flourished after the Reconquest as a thriving commercial and craft center.
During the Moorish caliphate, Toledo was a city where Muslims, Christians and Jews lived side by side. After the Arabs were driven out, their mosques were either demolished or converted into churches. It happened, among others with a 10th century mosque that can now be visited as the Church of Cristo de la Luz.
In the period after the expulsion of the Moors, the Old Town of Toledo acquired the Mudejar style characteristic of Spain, which combined Moorish influences with Gothic. It is in this style that the former synagogue, and now the Church of Santa Maria de la Blanca, the interior of which delights with Arab arches and decorations. Other Mudejar-style churches of Toledo are also beautiful, San Tome with the painting of El Greco The Burial of Count Orgaz, San Roman, which houses the Visigothic museum, San Juan, which was prepared as a mausoleum of the kings of Castile or Santiago del Arrabal, while in the El Transito synagogue from the 14th century there is a museum of Sephardic Jews.
The pearl of Toledo is the local cathedral, whose 90-meter tower towers above the buildings. It is a medieval building erected from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, with cloisters decorated with polychrome. decorations referring to Moorish decorations and French Gothic and 22 chapels, some of which were added to the church only in the 17th and 18th centuries.
