In the center, Madrid. All around, a vast plateau undulating in light hills, which cover here fields, there a scrub punctuated by places of pines. In winter, the snow unrolls its white coat. In summer, the country roars under the sun. Between the two, spring is wonderful: highlighting the tender green squares of young wheat, spreading out between the vines and the olive trees, the poppies spread in incredible rugs. On the steeples, the storks have found their nest.

If you look closely, a mountain range, struggling to exceed 2,000 meters, cuts Castile in half. To the north lies Old Castile (present – day Castile-Leon), the first to have been reconquered by the Christians, from the 11th century. To mark the positions, a line of castillos (castles) soon defended it: it was they who gave its name to the region.

In the south, New Castile (Castile-La Mancha), taken back soon after, retains the imprint of the one who tried to chase the windmills there: Don Quixote. On both sides, the cities – Toledo, Cuenca, Salamanca, Segovia (photo) – bear witness to the fabulous development of the Spanish Golden Age. The architecture is splendid, and the UNESCO classifications are multiplying like hotcakes.

Toledo of the Catholic Monarchs

The sun in its morning run bathes the cloister of the Franciscan monastery of San Juan de los Reyes (photo) in a soft light. The flamboyant Gothic arches stand out against a background of shadows, emphasizing the elegance of their intertwined veins. In the center of the patio, the roses thrive, the boxwood keep the humidity of the night. The orange trees, covered at the same time with fruits and flowers, scent the air with an intense odor.

All around, under the galleries, watches the round of saints, garlanded with floral patterns, vine branches, geometric lines drawing kinds of clovers, hearts, leaves. Enthroned above the portal leading to the church, a polychrome Christ, the pink with the cheeks, is surrounded by two angels with blond hair.

In the sanctuary, giant eagles, holding royal crests in their greenhouses, assert, peremptorily, the pre-eminence of the Catholic Monarchs. Founders of the place, they made Toledo the capital of reunified Spain. Barely ten years, when the monarchs had, by their union, married Castile to Aragon.

On the exterior walls, Isabelle and Ferdinand took care to display symbolic memories to everyone: dozens of heavy chains, torn from Christian prisoners after the city was conquered from the Moors in 1085. First great Castilian victory which pava the way to the union to come.

A past made of tolerance

The power of the crenellated walls, the bounced bastions and the doors gushing above the Tagus – whose waters almost surround the peak of Toledo dominated by the imposing silhouette of the Alcazar (photo) -, reveals the harshness of the battles of long ago. It nevertheless conceals at first glance what, for centuries, made the city great: a period during which the three great monotheistic religions, Islam, Judaism and Christianity, rarely coexisted in other places or times.

In this respect, Arabian Toledo forms one of the largest cultural centers in Europe, home to renowned historians, mathematicians and astronomers. A dozen mosques rubbed shoulders with churches and synagogues. The fall of Toledo in 1085 sealed the progress of the Reconquest, but not necessarily the end of its peak. On the contrary.

Fascinated by the world they submitted; the Christian kings adopted certain customs. Their scribes drew from the source of Arab and Jewish manuscripts, spreading throughout Europe the knowledge of these other worlds and of forgotten Antiquity.

Architecture infused various influences. You only have to see the synagogue of Santa María la Blanca (12th century), whose five vessels sail under a rain of horseshoe arches reminiscent of the most beautiful Almohad mosques. Pinecones adorn the capitals, and, on the upper level, friezes draw full moons with constantly renewed honeycomb patterns.

At first glance, the Church of San Román (13th century), now a Visigoth museum, seems more Muslim in form than Christian – if only these large medieval frescoes representing the resurrection of the dead. It is typical of this style which has been called Mudejar, born in reconquered Spain, which appealed to Islamic, floral and geometric decorative forms.

The bloody Spanish resurrection

In 1492, the tone changes. The kingdom of Granada is taken, Spain becomes one. Sultan Boabdil fled crying and the Catholic Monarchs sang a bloody hymn to the divine. The Inquisition required Jews, installed for at least a millennium, to convert or leave. Those who remain know the stake for many: Torquemada, himself the son of a converso, directs the court without mercy or mood.

An edict hostile to the Gypsies was adopted in 1499, another against the Moors in 1502. Despite the agreement obtained by Boabdil during his capitulation, his people were forbidden Islam, customs and Arabic language. Half a century later, a certificate of limpieza de la sangre (purity of blood) is required of converts. The last Moors were driven out in 1609 from Sierra Nevada, where they had withdrawn.

Almighty Spain in the 16th century, enriched by the plunder of the New World, imposed its political, cultural and religious imperialism. Thus, begins the Spanish Golden Age, placed under the double tutelage of royal absolutism and faith. Churches and chapels are multiplying, often in place of mosques (which had themselves replaced Visigothic churches).

The cathedrals are bigger than ever, the high altars are colossal, the gigantic altarpieces. The Gothic style is gradually abandoned for the Plateresque style (photo), the beginning of the Renaissance, inspired by the ornamental patterns of the gold smithery (platería).

Almagro, on the border

A large village in La Mancha illustrates the glorious period marked by the Reconquest and the Golden Age: Almagro. In the 13th century, the city became the seat of the military and religious order of Calatrava, the first in Spain, born in the wake of the reconquest of Castile. It was then necessary to fix the border, to protect the outposts.

Soon, 20,000 monk soldiers formed an army so large that the Moors withdrew. Each fighter was bound to a life dictated by Cistercian rule: making a vow of obedience, chastity, poverty, they had to remain silent most of the time, to fast four days a week, to wear the white robe adorned with the Greek cross fleurdelisée, emblem of the order, and to sleep with their arms.

The current face of Almagro owes more to the Golden Age and the emblematic figure of Charles V. The Flemish monarch dispatched to this Spain which fell into his hands all that Germany had of administrators, financiers and bankers. This is how the Függers arrived, so rich that the emperor was forced to cede to them the rights to exploit the possessions of the order of Calatrava – mercury mine of Almadén in the first place. Their brick palace, half Mudejar, half Renaissance, and those of their followers, testify to an extraordinary power.

Wanted by the Függers, the Plaza Mayor(photo), one of the few in Spain to have preserved its wooden galleries supported by a horde of 80 columns, forms a real theater setting. Obvious for this city which also preserves the last open-air theater of the time (Corral de las Comedias), closed in 1745 for “health reasons” – and more certainly to avoid fights on the ground, reserved for the people. Every year in July, he comes back to life at a great classical theater festival.

Cuenca, crossing the Mancha

The La Mancha region is vast and has many areas of interest. Some go on a pilgrimage in the imaginary footsteps of Don Quixote and those, a little more tangible, of Cervantes, his fertile prose writer. What is left of it? White mills in shambles, perched on ridges where, in winter, blow bad winds. All of them dozed off, some were rebuilt.

Their flights, from nipple to nipple, lead to Alarcón, even more peaceful than Almagro. On a peak surrounded by the Rio Júcar, fortified twice more than once, the village (200 inhabitants) splits the wind like a ship on the high seas. Its castle has become Parador, one of the most charming in the country, whose terraces plunge into the abyss.

Further north, Cuenca, bounded by the same river Júcar and its tributary the Huécar, moor at the gates of a small mountain range bearing his name. It is a figurehead that this high-rise city, all of stairs and cobblestones, discreet passages and secret passages. We embrace it from morning to evening, to discover its cathedral (the first in Gothic style in Spain), the splendid Mudejar ceiling of the octagonal San Pedro church and a multitude of museums widely open to modernity.

This is where all the contrast of Cuenca lies: the most renowned of its museums, devoted to Spanish abstract art from the 1950s and 60s, occupies the most incredible of its medieval houses – one of these famous Casas Colgadas, “suspended” half-timbered houses (understand: above the void). The space, made up of a multitude of small rooms forming a maze, is sumptuous. Just like the viewpoints, through the windows, on the opposite slope of the Huécar, where the old San Pablo convent moored (photo), reached by a bridge probably a little too dizzying for some.

Segovia, stronghold

Segovia is at an altitude of 1,000 meters, on a rocky outcrop overlooking the Castilian plain. The Romans clearly understood its strategic interest. To better be able to live there, sheltered from the natural walls, they erected a fantastic aqueduct (photo), 728 meters long and 28 meters high at its highest point. It is still there, intact, taking giant stepsacross the Plaza del Azoguejo.

Reclaimed in the wake of Toledo, Segovia emerged very early from the limbo of Moorish history. Its Christian liberators devoted an incredible amount of churches to it. The semicircular arches are complemented here by narthex and Tuscan-style bell towers. On that of San Estebánfloats a black rooster with a white crop that could have been Gallic!

These shrines look pale, however, in front of the cathedral, rebuilt in 1521 under Charles V after the destruction of the revolt of the Comunidades (cities opposed to imperial power). Its golden stone rises in a forest of railings and pinnacles, to the highest point of the spire of the dome, 88 meters high. Further down, we come to the Alcázar, a spooky eagle’s nest, where Romans, Visigoths, Moors and kings of Spain were fortified.

In the evening, when the golden light coats the building, you have to descend the calles bordered by palaces, emerge outside the walls and go up, on the other bank of the Clamores, towards this paradise. Camino natural del Eresma, along which flourishes euphorbia, fragrant thyme, hyssop with purplish flowers. In line of sight (but at the cost of a few sweats): the most beautiful panoramas of the city.

Behind the walls of Ávila

Grown at 1130 meters above sea level, on a wind-beaten eminence, Ávila has everything of a small provincial town. The hours shine there with the sound of bells, without disturbing the storks installed on the roofs of churches. They are new to have built their nest on the only chapel of Mosén Rubi. Other perch on an old factory chimney and even on a gas station! And as the air warms up slowly, hundreds, thousands of swallows stain the sky with their disorderly flights.

To better observe this small world, nothing beats walking the walkway. A powerful speaker perfectly preserved, erected the day after the reconquest and interspersed with 88 protruding and closely spaced towers (photo), encloses the entire ancient city; it is this that has earned Ávila to be classified as World Heritage. These walls, 3 meters thick and 12 meters high, form an impassable fence 2.5 km in circumference.

The panorama revealed there is naturally breath taking, in particular over the Romanesque basilica of San Vicente. This sanctuary, with its remarkable portal supported by a battery of column-statues, shelters the revered tomb of the Martyrs, a polychrome Romanesque masterpiece dating from the end of the 12th century.

Ávila, in addition to be a city with a harsh climate, is a city that tends to austerity. Thus, the Dominican royal monastery and its cloisters, devoid of any flourish. Thus, the half-fortified cathedral, caught in the walls, where the air currents slide. No wonder Saint Teresa, who helped restore Christianity to humility and discipline by strengthening the strict Carmelite rule, was born here.

The Salamanca apotheosis

Is there a more beautiful, more engaging city in all of Castile? Designated European Capital of Culture in 2002, Salamanca has one of the oldest universities in Europe, founded in 1218 and now run by more than 40,000 students (a quarter of the population!) – including many Erasmus students. The Spanish inn is here, in the faculties of art and humanities installed in the palaces of the Spanish golden age.

The writer Miguel de Unamuno, long rector of the Salmantine university, was not the last to recognize it. ” It is an open and joyful city ,” he wrote, adding: “The sun has gilded the stones of its towers, temples and palaces, this soft and tender stone which, when oxidized, takes on a fiery color of old gold. When the sun goes down, it’s a feast for the eyes”.

The festival is repeated almost every evening, while the Plateresque facades of the University, the San Estebán church (photo) and the Casa de las Muertes are lit up. All date back to the 16th century, when the city reached its architectural peak.

An apogee declined here in an incredible profusion of sculpted details and capitals running from one cloister to another – those of the Dueñas Convent. They are wildly imaginative, bringing up columns of sometimes terrifying chimeras. Also, remarkable, the so-called Salmantine arches of the patios, unique to the city, take the form of inverted brackets.

Salamanca, rebellious city

Salamanca architects and stonemasons left 1,001 oddities as evidence. Thus, on the facade of the university, the bizuts still hunt the frog: the batrachian, tiny, rests on a skull. Whoever does not find it, it is said, will fail his exams! Those who, on the contrary, succeed, are always granted the right to graffiti the walls of a Victor full of pride. Many inscriptions of this type remain, partially erased, on the buildings of the city. Today they are made with paint and no longer, as in the past, with bull blood.

Close to the university, the north portal of the cathedral plays its own score. Among modern sculptures that mix with those of triumphant Gothic, families go in search of funny zigzags: an authentic astronaut and a devil holding an ice cream cone in his hand.

In the Minor Schools, a room houses what remains of the fantastic Cielo de Salamanca, a vault painted in the 15th century on 400 m2, superimposing the sky chart and the constellations of the Zodiac. We meet a long sea snake, a chariot pulled by a raven, a scorpion, a centaur.

Over the largely pedestrian streets, we still come face to face with the strange Casa de las Conchas(photo), dating from the Catholic Monarchs and sown with more than 300 scallops, emblem of the owner of the place, knight of the order of the same name.

A few more steps and here is the Plaza Mayor, reminiscent of that of Madrid – better. It is entirely framed by galleries with baroque arcades decorated with carved medallions representing all those who, one day, counted for Spain. Christopher Columbus triumphs there. Cervantes is there. Until Franco who added to the long list of his predecessors.

The place is ideal for having a first drink and tasting a first tapa. The evening, then, will be long, from bar to bar, from box to box, until a new dawn break.

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