The Picturesque Antiquities of Spain: Described in a series of letters, with illustrations representing Moorish palaces, cathedrals, and other monuments of art, contained in the cities of Burgos, Valladolid, Toledo, and Seville.Wells, Nathaniel Armstrong
Islamic
The Picturesque Antiquities of Spain: Described in a series of letters, with illustrations representing Moorish palaces, cathedrals, and other monuments of art, contained in the cities of Burgos, Valladolid, Toledo, and Seville.
We will now hasten to the opposite extremity of the city, where the
monastery of San Juan de los Reyes lays claim to especial interest. But
I already hear you cry for mercy, and exclaim against these endless
convents and monasteries; the staircases, courts, and corridors of which
cause more fatigue to your imagination, than to the limbs of those who,
however laboriously, explore their infinite details. Infinite they are,
literally, in Toledo; where the churches, the greater number of which
belong to convents, are not seen, as elsewhere, scattered singly among
the masses of the habitations, but are frequently to be found in
clusters of three or four, whether united by the same walls, or facing
each other at the two sides of a street. It may, perhaps, afford you a
short relief to pick your way over the somewhat rugged pavement of a
few of the Toledo streets, and take a survey of the exterior town, which
our present destination requires us to traverse in its entire extent. I
must inform you that, for the success of this enterprise, the stranger
stands in absolute need of a pilot, without whose assistance his
embarrassments would be endless.
Toledo scarcely boasts a street in which two vehicles could meet and
continue their route. Most are impassable for a single cart; and, in
more than one, I have found it impossible to carry an open umbrella.
Such being the prevailing width of the streets, their tortuous direction
causes a more serious inconvenience. He who has attempted the task of
Theseus, in the mazes of some modern garden labyrinth, will comprehend
the almost inevitable consequence of relying on his own wits for finding
his way about Toledo,--namely, the discovery that he has returned to his
point of departure at the moment he imagined that half the town
separated him from it. This result is the more favoured by the
similarity of the streets and houses. No such thing as a land-mark. All
the convents are alike. You recollect at a particular turning, having
observed a Moorish tower; consequently, at the end of the day, the sight
of the Moorish tower leads you on, buoyed up by doubly elevated
spirits, in the required direction, most anxious to bring the tiring
excursion to a close: but this tower leads you to the opposite extremity
of the city to that you seek, for there are half a dozen Moorish towers,
all alike, or with but a trifling difference in their construction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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