It is difficult to ascribe the Alcazar, to which reference has so often been made, to any one epoch. It has undergone so many vicissitudes, so many reconstructions, that the name, as we have employed it, must be understood to represent a site rather than the actual palace. A stronghold of some sort has always been here--possibly, in Roman times, the Arx, where tradition avers the martyr Leocadia suffered death. The Arabian geographer, Jerif al Edris, writing in 1154, describes Toledo as “a town great in extent and population, extremely strong, with fine ramparts, and an Alcazaba, fortified and impregnable.” This citadel was doubtless the Alcazar, which was strengthened and rebuilt by successive Castilian kings, and is said to have been the residence of the Cid, the first Christian Alcaide. Added to, reconstructed, partially demolished and repeatedly restored, it must have presented an aspect rude and heterogeneous enough when, in 1538, Charles V. ordered Alonso de Covarrubias and Luis de Vega to rebuild the palace entirely on the lines of the new Alcazar of Granada. The Flemish Emperor may, then, fairly be considered the founder of the present fortress-palace, though it has since his time undergone radical transformations. It was burnt down during the War of Succession in 1710, restored sixty years later, destroyed again by the French in 1810, and devastated by a third conflagration as late as 1887. Since 1882 it has been the seat of the Royal Military Academy. The northern façade was constructed after the designs of Covarrubias, and looks on the square created by Ferdinand and Isabel in 1502. The reconstruction was so complete that probably no stone of the older façade was left in its place. The façade is severe and majestic, revealing classical influence, though not without important traces of the plateresque. It is flanked by towers, and adorned with a handsome portal--the work of Enrique de Egas, brother-in-law of Covarrubias. Over the door are the Imperial arms, supported by the figures of two heralds or mace-bearers. The fortress-like eastern façade is believed to be a part of the original Alcazar as restored by Alfonso X.; the western side of the building dates from the reign of the Catholic sovereigns, and the southern, with massive Doric pillars and square turrets, was built after designs by Juan de Herrera. The inner court, or _patio_, is described by a Spanish writer as “solemn, grandiose, full of majesty ... constructed for the dwelling-place of the August Cæsar.” It forms a spacious parallelogram and is enclosed by an arcade in two storeys with columns of the Corinthian order. Above the capitals are displayed the escutcheons of the various kingdoms ruled over by Charles. The modern restorers of the palace have adorned the court with a statue of the Emperor in the Roman costume in which he was so fond of being represented.