Segovia: from the Roman aqueduct up the old main street to the Alcázar: a self-guided walk
By Alleytale
The aqueduct up the main street to the Alcázar
The old main street rises from the aqueduct past noble houses and Romanesque churches to the Plaza Mayor and the cathedral, and the Comuneros revolt of 1520 and 1521 and its leader Juan Bravo keep coming back, in the statue, the theatre, the cathedral and the old cathedral's cloister.
The stops
The Roman aqueduct brought water to Segovia from springs in the mountains 17 kilometres away, and its raised arcade of 167 arches stayed in use until 1973. It is built of granite blocks laid without mortar and reaches 28.5 metres at its tallest, counting nearly 6 metres of foundation. Its date is not settled: one reading of the lost dedication letters pointed to Emperor Domitian and a completion around 98 AD, while evidence published in 2016 suggests a date after 112 AD.
Photo: M.Peinado from Alcalá de Henares, España — CC BY 2.0 This house was built in the last third of the 15th century as a fortified house by Pedro López de Ayala, to defend the Puerta de San Martín, a gate pulled down in 1883. It is known for a facade of 617 granite points and a Renaissance courtyard whose Talavera tiles show buildings of Segovia. The art and design school that opened here in 1977 still uses it, and the Spanish article compares its stonework to the Casa de las Conchas in Salamanca and the Casa dos Bicos in Lisbon.
Photo: Bernard Gagnon — CC BY-SA 3.0 Two limestone figures by the sculptor Francisco Bellver, set up in 1852 at the top of a staircase, were meant to be mermaids but look more like sphinxes, with a woman's head on a lion's body. They flank the statue of Juan Bravo by Aniceto Marinas, unveiled in 1921, which honours a leader of the Comuneros who rebelled against Charles V and was beheaded at Villalar on 24 April 1521. The square is officially the Plaza de Medina del Campo, but it is popularly called the Plaza de las Sirenas or of Juan Bravo.
Photo: Romerin — CC BY 3.0 The tower takes its name from the last Segovian family of landed gentry to live here. It is 25 metres high on a base of 8 by 9 metres and belongs to a palace of two towers, a patio and a garden gallery that is dated between the 15th and 16th centuries, with geometric sgraffito on its walls. Charcoal graffiti survive near the top of the tower, among them drawings made in the Civil War, when a convent school occupied the building and its pupils were set to watch for aircraft.
Photo: Carlos Delgado — CC BY-SA 3.0 Built in the 12th century, this church already existed in 1117, when its abbot appears as a witness in a will. It has a porticoed gallery running round the church except at the apse, with round arches on columns that carry Romanesque capitals, and a Romanesque-Mudéjar bell tower with brick arches on stone columns. The west doorway, sheltered by a porch whose arches rest on statues of Old Testament figures, is described as one of the largest in Spanish Romanesque.
Photo: Draceane — CC BY-SA 4.0 Segovia's main synagogue was built around the middle of the 14th century at what is now 7 Plaza del Corpus, in the former Jewish quarter. In the 15th century the authorities confiscated it and in 1419 it became a church dedicated to Corpus Christi, and it still forms part of a convent. A fire destroyed it in 1899; it was restored from 1902 and again in 2004, when the original plasterwork of the capitals was recreated from surviving fragments.
Photo: Barcex — CC BY-SA 3.0 For centuries this was the Plaza de San Miguel, named for a church that took up part of it, and it was Segovia's market place. Isabella the Catholic was proclaimed Queen of Castile here on 13 December 1474, and the church was demolished in 1532 and rebuilt a few metres away to widen the square. Today the apse of the cathedral, the town hall and the Teatro Juan Bravo, founded in 1917 and named for the Comunero, stand around it.
Photo: Emilio J. Rodríguez Posada — CC BY-SA 4.0 The first cathedral stood beside the Alcázar and was ruined in the Revolt of the Comuneros, so Charles V ordered a new one built somewhere completely different, to avoid the same outcome if the Alcázar were ever besieged again. Its first stone was laid on 8 June 1525 to the plans of Juan Gil de Hontañón, on the site of a convent and part of the Jewish quarter, and the cloister was reused from the old cathedral. The present stone spire dates from 1614, after lightning set the original wooden one on fire, and this is counted among the latest Gothic cathedrals in Europe.
Photo: Diego Delso — CC BY-SA 4.0 The Romanesque church of San Esteban dates from the 12th century and is known for its slender tower, which once rose 56 metres under a Baroque spire and was the tallest Romanesque belfry on the Iberian peninsula; with its present roof it reaches about 50 metres. The south side has a portico of ten arches with carved capitals, built in local pink limestone with granite column shafts. The interior was rebuilt in the 18th century after a fire, and the tower has been protected as a national monument since 1896.
Photo: Rowanwindwhistler — CC BY-SA 3.0 The poet Antonio Machado lived in this house from 1919 to 1932. He arrived in Segovia on 26 November 1919 to take the chair of French at the Instituto, and ended up in the boarding house run by María Luisa Torrego, at 3.50 pesetas a day. His room and furniture are kept, with the kerosene stove his brother Manuel gave him for the Segovian winters, and the patios still have vines and pear trees.
Photo: Latemplanza — CC BY-SA 3.0 This church stands on the small Plazuela de la Merced, where a convent of Nuestra Señora de la Merced, founded in 1367, once stood. Despite later changes it still keeps two Romanesque apses, with round-arched windows, columns, carved corbels and mouldings, and its north doorway is the original one. The main altarpiece has paintings by the Segovian Alonso de Herrera, and the church holds images by the sculptor Gregorio Fernández.
Photo: Draceane — CC BY-SA 4.0 This bronze and marble group by the Segovian sculptor Aniceto Marinas remembers Luis Daoiz and Pedro Velarde, the two artillery officers who fell fighting the French in the Dos de Mayo uprising of 1808. It stands in front of the Alcázar, home of the Royal Artillery College where, according to the Spanish article, both captains trained. The foundation stone was laid on 6 May 1908 and Alfonso XIII unveiled the monument on 15 July 1910.
Photo: Emilio J. Rodríguez Posada — CC BY-SA 2.0 Built between 1787 and 1790 to designs by Sabatini as the laboratory of the Royal Artillery College, this is the most notable neoclassical building in Segovia. The French chemist Joseph Louis Proust directed it for 13 years, teaching chemistry and metallurgy, and gave the first lesson here on 1 February 1792, on the analysis of atmospheric air. It stands on ground once occupied by the Gothic cloister of the old cathedral, which was moved beside the new cathedral after the Comuneros war.
Photo: Ministrillo — CC BY-SA 4.0 The Alcázar stands on a rocky crag at the western end of the old city and has served as a royal palace and fortress, a state prison, the Royal Artillery College and a military academy. The first reference to the castle dates from 1120. In December 1474, when news of King Henry IV's death reached Segovia, Isabella took refuge within its walls and was enthroned as Queen of Castile and León the next day.
Photo: Ángel Sanz de Andrés — CC BY-SA 4.0
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