After Toledo, SEGOVIA is the outstanding trip from Madrid. A relatively small city, strategically sited on a rocky ridge, it is deeply and haughtily Castilian, with a panoply of squares and mansions from its days of Golden Age grandeur, when it was a royal resort and a base for the Cortes (parliament). It was in Segovia - in the unremarkable church of San Miguel, off the Plaza Mayor - that Isabel la Católica was proclaimed queen.
For a city of its size, there are a stunning number of outstanding architectural monuments. Most celebrated are the Roman aqueduct , the cathedral and the fairy-tale Alcázar , but the less obvious attractions - the cluster of ancient churches and the many mansions found in the lanes of the old town, all in a warm, honey-coloured stone - are what really make it worth a visit. Just a few kilometres outside the city and reasonably accessible from Segovia are two Bourbon palaces, La Granja and Riofrío .
The City
Segovia has more than a full day's worth of sights. If you're on a flying visit from Madrid, obvious priorities are the cathedral and Alcazár in the old town, and the church of Vera Cruz and aqueduct , just outside the walls to west and east respectively. Given more time, take a walk out of the city for the views , or just wander at will through the old quarters of the city, away from the centre: each has a village atmosphere of its own.
Segovia is an excellent city for walks . Follow the signposted bypass road outside the city on the south side, and you'll get ever-changing views of the cathedral and the Alcázar from across the valley. The road then doubles back along the other side of the Alcázar, passing near the Convento de los Carmelitas and Vera Cruz.
From there you could continue to the Monasterio de El Parral (Mon-Sat 10am-12.30pm & 4.30-6.30pm, Sun 10-11.30am & 4.30-6.30pm; free); or better still, follow the track which circles behind Vera Cruz to the monastery. El Parral is a sizeable and partly ruined complex occupied by Hieronymites, an order found only in Spain. Ring the bell for admission and you will be shown the cloister and church; the latter is a late-Gothic building with rich sculpture at the east end. Gregorian Masses can be heard during the week at 1pm and on Sundays at noon.
For the best view of all of Segovia, however, take the main road north for 2km or so towards Cuéllar. A panorama of the whole city, including the aqueduct, gradually unfolds.
The Museo de Segovia (Tues-Sat 10am-2pm & 5-7pm, Sun 10am-2pm; ¬0.60, free Sat & Sun), which was recently reopened in the Casa del Sol, the former town abattoir perched on the walls between the Puerta de San Andrés and the Alcázar, has closed once more for further refurbishment and looks like remaining so for some time to come. When it does reopen, it promises to display an enlarged collection of fine arts, sculpture and ceramics, and ethnological and archeological exhibits. The Casa-Museo de Antonio Machado , c/Desamparados 5 (Tues-Sun: summer 11am-2pm & 4.30-7.30pm; winter 11am-2pm & 4-6pm; ¬1.20, free Wed), displays the spartan accommodation and furnishings of one of Spain's greatest poets of the early twentieth century; he is generally more associated with Soria but spent the last years of his life teaching here.
The granite aqueduct , over 800m long, supported by 166 arches and 120 pillars and at its highest point towering some 30m above the Plaza de Azoguejo, stands up without a drop of mortar or cement. No one knows exactly when it was built, but probably around the end of the first century BC under either Emperor Domitian or trajan. It no longer carries water from the Río Frío to the city and in recent years traffic vibration and pollution have been threatening to undermine the entire structure. If you climb the stairs beside the aqueduct you can get a view looking down over it from a surviving fragment of the city walls.
Another fine Romanesque church in the typical Segovian style, with mozárabe tower and open porticoes, is San Millán (daily 10am-2pm & 4.30-7.30pm), which lies between the aqueduct and the bus station. Its interior has been restored to its original form. Also, beyond the aqueduct, you'll find San Justo (Tues-Sat: summer noon-2pm & 5-7pm; winter 11am-1.45pm & 4-7pm) which has a wonderful Romanesque wall painting in the apse
Construction on Segovia's Catedral (daily: April-Oct 9am-6.30pm; Nov-March 9.30am-5.30pm) began in 1525, on the orders of Carlos V to make amends for the damage done to the city during the comuneros revolt. However, it was not completed for another 200 years, making it the last major Gothic building in Spain, and arguably the last in Europe. Accordingly it takes the style to its logical - or perhaps illogical - extreme, with pinnacles and flying buttresses tacked on at every conceivable point. Though impressive for its size alone, the interior is surprisingly bare for so florid a construction and its space cramped by a great green marble coro at its very centre. The treasures are almost all confined to the museum (same hours as cathedral, except Sun opens at 2.30pm; ¬1.80) which opens off the cloisters.
Down beside the cathedral, c/Daoiz leads past a line of souvenir shops to the twelfth-century Romanesque church of San Andrés and on to a small park in front of the Alcázar (daily: May-Sept 10am-7pm; Oct-April 10am-6pm; ¬3, Tues free for EU citizens). An extraordinary fantasy of a castle, with its narrow towers and flurry of turrets, it will seem eerily familiar to just about every visitor, having served as the model for the original Disneyland castle in California. It is itself a bit of a sham. Although it dates from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it was almost completely destroyed by a fire in 1862 and rebuilt as a deliberately hyperbolic version of the original. Still, it should be visited, if only for the magnificent panoramas from the tower.
Google Map of Segovia
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