The finest feature of the palace must have been the staircase, designed by Villalpando and Herrera, which has been to some extent restored after its destruction by Stahremberg in 1710. One of the widest staircases in the world, “it ends,” says Miss Hannah Lynch “in the void!” In truth, the Alcazar is not to-day a very interesting building. It is, in reality, quite impossible to identify the scenes of the romantic and historical episodes which we know occurred in one or other of the successive Alcazars. But the room in which Alfonso VI. died and the window at which the hapless Blanche de Bourbon wept, _pace_ the local guides, must have disappeared to the last stone and fragment ages ago. All that can be said of the palace to-day is that it forms an imposing landmark, and affords from its northern terrace one of the finest views of Toledo. To the age of Charles V. (or Carlos I. as in Spain he would properly be called) belongs the Hospital de San Juan Bautista, styled the Hospital de Afuera (outside) in the suburb of Covachuelas. The building was begun in 1541 by order of Archbishop Juan de Tavera, who died on his return from the baptism of Prince Carlos at Valladolid. The building was carried on after Bustamente’s death by the two Vergaras, and completed about 1600. The façade dates from the eighteenth century and is still unfinished. The courtyard, spacious and imposing, is divided into two and enclosed by colonnades. A fine Renaissance portal by Berruguete leads into the large chapel, which is in the form of a cross and surmounted by a dome. The pavement is of black and white marble. Before the altar is the tomb of Archbishop Tavera by Berruguete. This is one of the finest monuments in Spain. It was finished by Berruguete when he was over eighty years old, in 1561, his death taking place the same year in one of the rooms under the great clock. His sons received nearly a million maravedis for the work. “The Cardinal,” says Théophile Gautier, “is stretched out upon his tomb in his pontifical habit. Death has pinched his nose with its strong fingers, and the last contraction of the muscles, in their endeavour to retain the soul about to leave the body for ever, puckers up the corners of the mouth and lengthens the chin; never was there a cast taken after death more horribly true; and yet the beauty of the work is such, that you forget any amount of repulsiveness that the subject may possess. Little children in attitudes of grief support the plinth and the Cardinal’s coat of arms. The most supple and softest clay could not be more easy or more pliant; it is not carved, it is kneaded!” The hospital contains some of El Greco’s most notable work, which will be noticed in the chapter on that master.