CHAPTER XI
Bridges and Gates of Toledo
I HAVE said there are but two bridges guarding the wide sweep of the Tagus round Toledo, the Puente de Alcántara and the Puente de San Martin. These bridges are unimaginably picturesque and fine. The first you enter from the railway station, with an excellent view of the double line of walls, broken by towers built upon the rugged rocks. No more superb and impressive scene is to be found elsewhere than that the old city makes behind this castellated bridge. The bridge in its actual state was built by Alfonso X., on the ruins of the Moorish bridge, of which Rasis el Moro wrote: “It was such a rich and marvellous work and so subtly wrought, that never man with truth could believe there was any other such fine work in Spain.” The Moors in 866 constructed this in turn upon the ruins of the old Roman bridge, of which some traces still remain, and which the Goths repaired in 687, and it was destroyed in 1257. Since Alfonso’s time, the vicissitudes of Spanish history have wrought damage enough to this noble monument. In 1380 Tenorio restored it, and in 1484 the interior arch was repaired at the town’s cost by Andrès Manrique, in 1575 the entrance from the city was repaired, in 1721 the outer towers had to be restored, and in 1786, as well as in 1836, the entire bridge was submitted to general repairs. These alterations are all carefully noted by various inscriptions. In Philip II.’s reign was placed under the statue of St Ildefonso by Berruguete—
Anno Dom. mdlxxv., Philippo II., Hisp. Rege.
A longer one of that period was: Año DCLXXIIII. Wamba Rey godo restauró los muros des esta cuidad y los ofreció en versos latinos a Dios y los santos patrones de ella: los Moros los quitaron y pusieron letreros arabigos de blasfemias y errores—el rey D. Felipe II. con zelo de religion y de conservas las memorias de los reyes pasados, mandó, a Jo. Gutierrez Tello, Corregidor de la cuidad los quitase y pusiere como antes estaten los santos patrones con los versos del Rey Wamba. Ano de MDLXX.[21]
Another tells us of a great deluge that lasted for five months, from August to December, and carried off portions of the bridge, which was rebuilt by Alef, son of Mohamed Alameri, Mayor of Toledo, in the time of Almanzor. On one of the inner vaults are sculptured the arms of the Catholic Kings, Isabella and Fernando, and the inevitable relief of St Ildefonso receiving the chasuble from Our Lady. The entrance arch was constructed under Felipe V. instead of the Moorish tower that stood there. These restorations are insignificant. What one notes is the general impression, which is magnificent.
The bridge of San Martin is early thirteenth century work, built in 1203 after a terrible inundation that carried off the old bridge, which was probably a little lower down, where the Baño de la Cava, as this broken tower and the broken pillar opposite would indicate. In the Civil War of Pedro the Cruel and Henry of Trastamare, the principal arch was cut in two, and the Archbishop Tenorio had to restore the whole bridge almost in order to repair the damage. One of the legends of Toledo relates to this restoration. The architect to whom Tenorio confided the work miscalculated, and while the woodwork and scaffolding still enveloped the central arch, he discovered to his horror that the instant these supports were removed the bridge would fall. This would mean nothing less than ruin and disgrace, and the unfortunate architect confided his despair to his wife. Without a word, at the dead of night, she went down to the bridge and set the scaffolding on fire. Nobody saw her, and the accident was believed in and deplored. While the arch was being rebuilt, this time happily with the error rectified, the woman, finding the burden of remorse greater than she could bear, went to the Archbishop and told her tale. Tenorio was so delighted with her ingeniousness that he congratulated her fortunate husband and ordered her figure to be sculptured on the keystone of the central arch. Señor Parro doubts if the little figure on the north side is that of a woman, and after careful examination is inclined to believe that it is meant for a bishop, probably Tenorio himself. One would prefer to believe in the woman, of course, as legends are always pretty and graceful, but facts are facts, and if the headgear be really a mutilated mitre and not a woman’s cap?
The bridge is narrow and extremely high above the river, as here the thunderous rush of water down the rocky gorge comes often with the menace of flood, and beside this splendid central arch that gave rise to the legend Tenorio’s arch, 140 feet wide and 95 above the water level, most lofty and grand, there are four smaller arches. At either end, like the Alcántara Bridge, there is a tower and gateway, with Moorish arches and battlements, and vaulted arches for the passengers; inscriptions and reliefs abound, a statue of St Julian by Monegro and of Alfonso VII. the Emperor. Across the southern hills, among their bare scented folds, beyond silent gorge and wild waterway, lie the famous Cigarrales, the villas, the gardens, the orchards, where the apricots grow as they grow nowhere else. Tirso de Molina sings their charms, and the aubergines of the Cigarrales were famous even in the days of Guzman de Alfarache. Here towards evening the townsfolk wander out to taste the air of the hills and revel in cool leafage, and the walk back in the gathering shade, when the town is getting ready its feeble electric illumination, and the stars are out, and the streets are dim and silent. Then more than ever will Toledo appear to you as something too beautiful for reality, the imagined city of wild romantic legend, an intangible evocation that surely the morning lights must disperse, that the reality of day must vulgarise. It is not in the nature of modern eyes to gaze with security upon a picture so mysteriously strange, so solemnly sad in its grandeur, so complete a surprise.
To-day there are three gates in the outer walls of Toledo, the Puerta Visagra, the Puerta del Cambron and the Puerta Nueva. Entering the city by the Bridge of San Martin, you front the gate of the Cambron here, so called from the brambles that grew about that small, charming, pinnacled edifice, built upon the spot of Wamba’s old gate in Alfonso VI.’s time, and was then completely Moorish in style. In 1576 it was restored and took on its present half renaissance, half classical aspect, with its four towers, its centre court and columns. Berruguete’s lovely statue of St Leocadia used to stand in the niche above the lines in her honour from the Mozarabe ritual sculptured below:
Tu es patrona vernul[ae]
Ab urbis hujus termino
Procul reptile tedium.
Gutierrez Tello, we know, was ordered by Philip II., iniquitous Vandal, to break up all the beautiful Moorish inscriptions on the bridges and gates, but one of these inscriptions still remains on the fragment of a column; the finest have disappeared. This was one: “There is but one God on earth, and Mohamad is his messenger. All the faithful who believe in our prophet, Mohamad, and continue to kiss the hands and feet of Murabito Muley abda Alcadar every day, will be without stain, will not be blind, nor deaf, nor lame, nor wounded; and receiving his benediction, when the time of his death comes, will only be three days ill, and dying, will go with open eyes to Paradise forgiven of all sins.” Who would not willingly kiss the hands and feet of Murabito Muley every day in return for such promises? There was another interesting inscription to the same Muley on an old gateway: “Prayer and peace over our Lord and Prophet Mohamad. All the faithful, when they went to lie down in their beds, mentioning the Alfaqui Murabito Abdala, and recommending themselves to him, will enter no battle out of which they will not come victorious, and in whatever battle against Christians they may stain their lances with Christian blood, dying that same day, will go alive and whole with eyes open to Paradise, and his descendants will remain till the fourth generation forgiven.” Evidently a man to have on one’s side in the struggle for existence and in the hope of joys to come in a better world. Small wonder Ponz called Toledo the city of magnificent inscriptions. You are greeted everywhere with grandiloquent or heroic utterances.
The old Puerta Visagra is now blocked up. Through it Alphonso VI. entered Toledo. The work is entirely Moorish, of the first period, heavy and simple, with the triple arches so delightfully curved in horseshoe shape, and the upper crenelated apertures. The meaning of the name is still disputed. Some give it a Latin origin, signifying Via-Sacra, others an Arabian origin, Bab, gate, and Shara, meadow, as it leads into the stony fields without, in the Vega. This seems to be the more probable one, since the Puerta Visagra distinctly dates from the time of the Moors. The new gate faces the highroad of Estremadura, and was built under Charles Quint, 1550. It forms two edifices, joined by a large square courtyard with high turreted walls on either side. The outer arch and tower are magnificent; the whole is impressive. On the south front is the shield with the arms of Spain, and the Emperor’s eagles, in sculptured granite, with a Latin inscription below. There is another front behind the vaulted entrance, with two graceful square towers, adorned with balconies and elegant capitals narrowing to a pyramidal point, roofed with white and green tiles, which make an odd and not-unpleasing note against the brown rampart running upward. These gleaming azulejo tower-roofs dominate the plain, and, seen from above, the effect of this little dash of brightness amidst all these brown tones of earth and stone is indescribably gay. Within, on the doorway, is the inscription of the Senate’s dedication of the gate to Charles Quint, and beyond the patio, in a niche in the central arch, is an exceedingly fine statue of St Eugenio, either by Berruguete or Monegro. Both these artists were engaged by Toledo to make statues for the gates and bridges, and confusion now rests upon all the statues except that of St Leocadia (now in the Hermitage of the Cristo de la Vega), which is assuredly a Berruguete, and perhaps the most exquisite thing he has ever done. Monegro’s work will be sufficiently appreciated by the fact of this confusion. Here, again, are finely sculptured, in large relief, the arms of the Emperor, and a life-size angel guards the city with unsheathed sword. This statue and the shield were originally gilt, but time has worn the gilt away; in either tower-front, on both sides of the shield, are two statues of Gothic kings. But a mere description of the details of this splendid gate can really give no impression of its general effect. If there were not the Puerta del Sol—one of the world’s masterpieces—so near, one would be tempted to call it the finest on earth.
But to write of the Puerta del Sol—Moorish gem against a Spanish sky, miracle of loveliness upon a rough and naked rampart! A thing of bewildering beauty, even among crowded enchantments! It is to pick one’s way through superlatives and points of exclamation, and call in vain on the goddess of sobriety to subdue our tendency to excess and incoherence. Put this matchless gate in the middle of the desert of Sahara: it would then be worth while making the frightful voyage alone to look at it. However far you may have journeyed, you would still be forever thankful to have seen such a masterpiece—incontestably a work of supreme art, perhaps the rarest thing of the world. Is there a flaw in it? Mine were not the eyes to detect it. I could only look on and worship. The last evening of my stay in Toledo, I went out to make my farewell visits by dusk to the town, accompanied by my friend, the Spanish painter. Into that lovely walk I gathered too many impressions to disengage them, but I still see the Puerta del Sol in the blue twilight, with a big star—like a lamp—trembling on the edge of it, in the fluid luminosity of a fading sunset. “Una preciocedad,” murmured my Spanish friend, familiar with its witchery for more than fifteen years; and we stood there for a half hour in dead silence, making our prayer of thanks to the strong, great hands, the commanding genius, that wrought for our delight, so long ago, a work which defies the banality of description.
This impressive Moorish monument is fashioned of rough stone, above the brilliant Vega, with the arid hills around. The towers are of brown granite, and above span the vaulted entrance. The sides form a semi-circular and a half square tower, and the interior is divided into three compartments. There is a great centre ogival arch, resting on two columns with Moorish
inscriptions; from the zones of ornamental arches enlaced, bayed above and horseshoe-shaped beneath, break away other architectural flourishes of raised ogival, the zones divided by angles with the points inward. Behind the great arch, there is another horseshoe arch, and above it is a round medallion, with a relief, of the Virgin offering the chasuble to St Ildefonso; beyond are two simple ogival arches, united to form the rising line of the portcullis, and then another horseshoe arch in the back façade forms the same design. Above are three similar little arches, with railings, and in the semi-circular tower below are three apertures for barbaric hostilities, in each façade joining the central compartment. Each aperture, in front, has an ornamental bayed arch, placed above three corbels crowned with towers turreted in pyramidal capitals. Within, a series of Arabian arches—the quadrangular tower only adorned with little Moorish arches. The age of this most exquisite gate is uncertain. It is believed to be of the second period of Moorish architecture in Toledo, that is, tenth century, with alterations as far as the thirteenth. While the architecture is perfectly Moorish, there is some indication of Christian influence—in the use of a stone not generally used by the Moors, and also in the reliefs of the Virgin and St Ildefonso, and in the little marble relief of the two women and the man, supposed to perpetuate the tale of the Governor Fernando Gonzalez, Lord of Yegros, whom San Fernando, that uncompromising king, sentenced to death for betraying two women: by some believed to represent St John the Baptist, Herodias and her mother. The simple traveller, who loves righteousness and truth, will stick to the avenging sovereign sentencing thus summarily the rascal governor. But it is like the figure in the central arch of the Bridge of San Martin. Believe what you like best. Fernando may have boiled his enemies in pots of water over huge logs, or roasted them alive before roaring fires. He himself was such an admirable fellow in his private life that we are constrained to believe his enemies merited such treatment. He died during the third period of Moorish architecture in Spain, and left all he possessed to the Hospital of Santiago. It was perhaps a little excessive on the part of St Fernando, after chopping off the governor’s perfidious head, to confiscate all his property and bestow it on the poor. The governor’s relations might justly have regarded themselves as defrauded. But those were the happy days when subjects had no rights, and only breathed by divine permission of the sovereign. Young people who fell in love without the king’s leave were dispatched to prison or a nunnery. In the leisure that war and revolt occasionally allowed him, the king made and unmade marriages; and if, glancing from his palace windows, he chanced to see a man pass by who looked as if, at some future date, he might be tempted to commit a crime, he ordered his instant execution, in the interests of humanity. Sure, indeed was it worth while to be a King in those delightful days, a life never monotonous for the lack of surprises, never empty of vicissitudes and every odd and stupendous stroke of fortune.
A word must be said about the legendary Baño de la Cava. The probability is that this celebrated and picturesque ruin was portion of a turreted bridge that existed before the construction of San Martin, and was swept away in one of the inundations that wrought at periods so much damage to the town. The ruin is undoubtedly Moorish, and Moorish letters may be traced on one of the broken columns, which would prove it posterior to the Berber invasion under Tarik. The height of the old bridge is sufficiently indicated to show us that a wild rush of water from the upper rocky defile as it thunders down the gorge would quickly carry off the stoutest construction so lowly placed, hence the exceeding height of the central arch of Tenorio’s bridge, through which the Tagus in its most turbulent hour can gush at will. The ruin is a delightful one, and nothing could be more romantic than its situation. Graceless facts that so ruthlessly demolish poetic legends!
The walls and ramparts are dismantled now, but there are considerable traces of the Visigothic walls of 711, while the twelfth century walls of Alfonso, the conqueror, are naturally more distinct. Quite recent is the easy sloping road that winds up from the bridge of Alcántara to the Zocodover. If one regrets the old double walls that used to guard the city on this side, it must be admitted that there are agreeable compensations. The town is more open to the breezes of the Vega; the new road itself is a comfortable invention as a substitute for the battlemented and rocky altitude it was once to climb, and the pretty Miradero makes a graceful modern note in a mediæval picture. But giving your back to San Servando, and mounting the road of Nuestra Señora de la Valle, you may trace on the other side the broken ramparts in their extreme age and admirable preservation. And leaving the town by the Puerta de Visagra, wander round by the Vega, and here beyond the Puerta Lodada, you will admire the martial aspect of what remains of Wamba’s jagged walls within and the outer walls of Alfonso that run from the Puerta Nueva to the Lunatic Asylum.
Appendix
THE traveller to Toledo will be glad, perhaps, of some practical information. A guide for a short stay is indispensable. I did not claim the services of any, so cannot speak from personal experience, but the proprietor of the Hotel Castilla assures me that his German guide can be recommended. His charge is ten pesetas a day, nominally eight shillings, but often considerably less owing to the rate of change. My friend and guide, the Spanish painter, who came fifteen years ago to Toledo lo sketch and has since never been able to leave the witching city, highly recommends a young Italian guide, G. Borraino, who speaks several languages and knows his Toledo to the last stone. His charge, I imagine, is less, and he dwells up in the little Plaza de las Carmelitas, above the Puerta del Cambron, with amiable Italians who make and sell plaster casts.
There are four hotels in Toledo; the Castilla, the Norte, the Lina, and the Imperial. The Castilla is the best hotel of Spain, admirably situated, overlooking, behind, the broad Vega and the long serpentine Tagus curled upon the landscape. The table is French and good, the rooms are fine, the service quite modern, the whole fitted up with luxury and taste. The building is extremely handsome and spacious, with every modern comfort, and cost the marquis who built it a fortune. He rashly spent his money, but he is the benefactor of travellers to Toledo, and such is now the reputation of this first-class hotel that newly married couples from Madrid, and embassadors in search of distraction, come here instead of going abroad. Murray’s guide-book describes it as dear, which is not true, for such accommodation and service are cheap enough at fifteen pesetas a day. Older travellers who have had to put up with the older hotels give appalling accounts of their experience, so that for the sake of a few shillings it is the height of folly to be miserable while sight-seeing, when for very little more, you may enjoy comfort, harmony, and an excellent table, with the most scrupulous cleanliness.
The churches should be visited early; tips are everywhere indispensable but small. A plan of Toledo will be found very useful.
INDEX
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, Y, Z