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History of Toledo

Toledo declared on November 28, 1986 by UNESCO “World Heritage City” has managed to preserve an incomparable heritage that sinks its origins in the Neolithic.

All the peoples that have arrived in the Iberian Peninsula have left their mark of their culture in this city already defined by the Roman Tito Livio as “parva urbs, sed loco munitia” (small but well fortified place). Its entry into history occurs in the year 192 before Jesus Christ, when it was conquered by the Roman legions.

The Roman civilization already called it Toletum. Under his rule, temples, theaters, amphitheatres, circuses, walls and aqueduct were built.

Some of the remains of these buildings are still visible and can be visited, as is the case with the Roman Circus of Toledo in the Vega Baja area.

With the disappearance of Roman Hispania, the city was occupied by Germanic peoples.

The Visigoths will make it their capital, extending their kingdom to the entire Peninsula. The conversion of its king Recaredo, in the year 587, and the celebration in it of the Visigothic councils began the link of the city with Christianity, which would culminate centuries later with its designation as the primate seat of Spain .

With the arrival of the Muslims at the beginning of the 8th century, the city was renamed Tulaytula.

From then on, tolerance began to forge between the three cultures and religions (Jewish, Muslim and Christian) not exempt from times of tension and confrontation.

The Christian troops of Alfonso VI entered Toledo on May 25, 1085, putting an end to Arab domination, although the complete conquest of the Iberian Peninsula did not take place until 1492. In those medieval centuries, the city of Toledo was the seat of the Court and capital of the Castilian monarchy. It was in those centuries when the so-called “School of Translators of Toledo” was developed, giving it a good boost by Alfonso X the Wise.

Under the financial support and the protection of the Toledo archbishops, Mozarabic Jewish and Christian scholars were in charge of translating a good number of classical, Greek and Roman works, written by Aristotle, Ptolemy and Hippocrates, among others, and which arrived in Spain. in handwritten copies written in the Arabic language.

Toledo in the 16th century would reach its greatest splendor, even after the transfer of the capital to Madrid in 1561. The population then was around 70,000 inhabitants, a figure that has only been surpassed in the last years of the 20th century.

El Greco

In this environment, a painter of Cretan origin named Domenico Theotocopuli, better known as El Greco, highly valued by contemporary artistic vanguards, produced his best paintings.

At this time, El Greco arrived in Toledo and lived half of his life, the most fruitful period of his work. Its cosmopolitan character, the existence of a powerful civil society and a rich cultural life, together with the international vocation of its ruling classes and the start of large construction programs aimed at modernizing the city, undoubtedly led to this choice.

In this sense, it must be taken into account that Toledo had been a great medieval city, the cradle of Hispanic humanism thanks to its secular multiculturalism and, as such, had become an internationally recognized cultural and symbolic reference, holding the primacy of Spanish church in memory of its past as the capital of the Visigothic kingdom.

Its ruling classes also became part of the kingdom and the fashions they imposed became paradigms of one of the most universal cultures we know of.

That was the environment that El Greco experienced upon his arrival in 1577.

Years later, the definitive departure from the Court marks the beginning of the stagnation of Toledo and its subsequent decline. Its rulers reacted by promoting the civic pride of its inhabitants, something in which our artist participated actively.

Thanks to this, Toledo went from being the imperial city that enjoyed the favor of the monarchy, to the city of God that enjoyed the protection of the saints that El Greco painted.

The only important institution that remained in the city was the church, which is why it came to be considered the second Rome, and there is no shortage of authors who describe it as a convent city in the 16th to 18th centuries.

The economic and demographic decline suffered since the 17th century only began to be alleviated in the second half of the 18th century with the revitalization of the silk weaving industry and the establishment of the Royal White Weapons Factory.

In the 19th century, the economic motor was made up of the military training centers (Infantry Academy, Shooting School) and the beginning of the arrival of countless travelers encouraged by its romantic image. Novelists like M. Barrés or poets like Rilke will spread the beauty of Toledo in their publications.

The bureaucratic and military city of the 19th century will give way in the 20th century to a city that promotes its heritage and artistic value and becomes one of the most important tourist centers in Spain.

All architectural styles and all cultures have left unique signs of their presence in the history of Toledo.

…it is certainly better to make Toledo revive by catching it in the poetic disorder of its diverse elements: an original, confused, surprising mixture of a triple civilization, in which the Gothic confronts the Roman, and the Arab rubs shoulders with the Jew; where next to the church stands the mosque, where the basilica rises above the circus, where one date covers another without erasing it, and where centuries, races, religions collide or merge; and at each step, finally, the past sprouts through the present …

History of Toledo

El Greco

Sepharad: The Jews in Toledo, history and legend

Greco-Toledana Legend

Roman Toledo

History and legends of the very noble city of Toledo