From most points of view, both within and without the city, the cathedral is seldom well, and sometimes not at all, seen, standing as it does on much lower ground on the side of the rock which slopes towards the least accessible part of the river gorge, and much surrounded by other buildings, whilst the Alcazar, which occupies the highest ground in the whole city, is so vast and square a block of prodigiously lofty walls (old in plan, but modern in most of their details), as to command attention everywhere. The other side of the river is edged by bold hills, and all along its banks are to be seen water-wheels so placed as to raise the water for the irrigation of the land on either side. It is not, however, until after more intimate knowledge of the city has been gained, that its extreme picturesqueness and interest are discovered. The situation is, indeed, most wild and striking. The Tagus, winding almost all round the city, confines it much in the fashion in which the Wear surrounds Durham. But here the town is far larger, the river banks are more rocky, precipitous, and wild than at Durham: whilst the space enclosed within them is a confused heap of rough and uneven ground, well covered with houses, churches, and monasteries, and intersected everywhere by narrow, Eastern, and Moorish-looking streets and alleys, most of which afford no passage-room for any kind of carriage, and but scanty room for foot passengers. It is, consequently, without exception, the most difficult city to find one’s way in that I have ever seen, and the only one in which I have ever found myself obliged to confess a commissionaire[202] or guide of some sort to be an absolute necessity, if one would not waste half one’s time in trying to find the way from one place to another. The railway station is outside the city, which is entered from it by the famous bridge of Alcantara, which has a single wide and lofty arch above the stream, guarded on the further side by a gateway of the time of Charles V., and on the town side by one of semi-Moorish character. Above it are seen, as one enters, the picturesque apses of the old church of Santiago, and the tolerably perfect remains of the double _enceinte_ of the city walls; whilst on the opposite side of the river, as a further guard to the well-protected city, was the Castle of San Cervantes[203] (properly San Servando), of which nothing now remains but a few rugged towers and walls crowning the equally rugged rocks.[204] The road from the bridge, passing under the gateway which guards it into a small walled courtyard, turns sharply to the right under another archway, and then rises slowly below the walls until, with another sharp turn, it passes under the magnificent Moorish Puerta del Sol, and so on into the heart of the city.