Puerta de Toledo

Website: www.ciudadreal.es/puer...

Location

On the North side of the city, on the Ronda de Toledo.

Type of monument

Forts

Period

11th-14th centuries.

Art style

Gothic-Mudejar

Special trips

Remains of the city wall: piece of wall in the West of the city and the entrance arch to what was the Alcázar de Alfonso XI

How to get there

Road transport

The Puerta de Toledo is a part of the city wall that used to stand where the ring road now runs. It was around 4.5km in length and work started on its fortification in 1297. According to the chronicles, it had 130 towers along its long perimeter, made mostly of masonry and brick. Of all this, only a piece of wall on the West side of the city, the Arched entrance to what was the Alcázar de Alfonso XI, and this, the Puerta de Toledo remains.

It is built in the Gothic-Mudejar style, severe and undecorated, with well cut ashlars of local limestone, for its arches and corners, and the rest is of cut stone and masonry. It predates that of the Sol de Toledo by more than fifty years.


It consists of six arches where the combination of the pointed and horseshoe arches seem like a symbolic paradigm of the coexistence of the Christian and Moorish populations. The two exterior arches are steeply pointed, supported on columns attached to the walls, then there are another two horseshoe arches, one pointed one without decoration, and two more pointed ones on the interior, between which the portcullis was lowered.

They are flanked by two solid square towers 12 meters high by 4 wide, once crowned with battlements that are now gone. It formed a perfect cube, as the proportions of the height, width and depth were all equal.

A stone gusset on the internal face bears the construction date 1328, during the reign of Alfonso XI, although other well regarded authors consider it to be older. Its external wall bears the coat of arms of Castile.

Timetables

Free