When you left all this cultivated brilliance of nature, that showed the passage of the Moors, narrow and stony streets and lanes confronted you in your upward road from the bridges and gates. Then as now! _Cuestas_ and harsh passages, built upon peaks of rock and iron, Pisa calls them; twisted and narrow laneways. He accuses the Moors of having spoiled the town, of having obliterated the lustre and loveliness Roman and Goth bestowed upon it. This is an ill-tempered charge. The Moors gave in Spain everywhere more than the Christians lost, and the trial is, seeing the sad use the Christians made of what they received, to hold one's soul in patience, and not cry out against their philistinism. He believes that in Christian hands, "fine places, wide and noble streets, churches and hospitals will spread." Churches and convents, yes. But the streets remain the same, an expiation of the sins of civilisation, as twisted, as narrow, as stony as ever, good Dr Pisa, after eight centuries of Christian rule. The present Alcázar, which dominates the city, was first built by the Cid's sovereign, Alfonso, while the Moorish palace stood on the site of the monastery of St Augustine. In the parish of San Martin was the Alcázar of the infante Fadique, Sancho the Brave's uncle, within a magnificent view of the river and the Vega, its walls running as far as the Puerta del Cambron. It fell into the hands of Maria de Molina, Sancho's widow, and she gave the property to Gonzalo Ruiz de Toledo, lord of Orgaz, tutor of King Alonso and the infanta Beatrix. Gonzalo Ruiz, on his death, bequeathed it to the Augustines. In the time of Gothic rule the councils of Toledo were held in this Alcázar. A wall ran then from the Alcázar to the Palacio de Galiana, and continued from the Zocodover to the gate of Perpignan to separate the dwellings of the Moors from those of their conquerors. The Christians lived between the arch under the Chapel of the Precious Blood and the bridge of Alcántara. Later on Isabel and Fernando embellished the royal Alcázar, which was guarded by a thousand castillian hidalgoes, and Carlos V. built the great staircase, one of the most regal of the world, while a superb salon, richly wrought in arabesque, was the introduction of the Constable of Castillo, Alvaro de Luna, at an earlier period. All these glories are departed, negligently burnt. The first subject to occupy the Alcázar in state was the Cid, Ruiz Diaz, whom Alfonso named first governor of Toledo after its capture from the Moors. But the Cid chose to build his own house near it, and installed a cavalier therein in his place. The Cid's house is now San Juan de los Caballeros. True, Rasis el Moro, in the beautiful copy of his Arabian manuscript,[14] translated into Castillian by Ambrosio de Morales from the Portuguese translation ordered by King Denys of Portugal, of Maestre Mahomed and Gil Perez, says that Caesar was the first governor of Toledo, and built the bridge