The best spot to see Avila's walls is from Las Cuatro Postes. From this vantage point it's easy to see that Avila's walls deserve their exalted ranking above other walled cities. As an added plus, you can also pay homage to the little shrine here, built on the spot where young Teresa was kidnapped by her uncles and forced to abandon her suicide mission to Moorish Africa.

While the walls are the most main tourist attraction for most visitors, it's also a major pilgrimage spot due to Avila's being the home of Saint Teresa. She had the misfortune of desperately wanting to be a martyr after Spain had already evicted the Moors and ended the religious war. So, at the tender age of seven, she ran away from home to go to Africa, where the Moors still reigned, and try to get martyred there. She was intercepted by her uncles outside of town and forced to return home, where she became a nun. She spent the rest of her life founding convents and reforming them. She spent a fair amount of time in prison, as many of the lazy nuns weren't keen on being reformed but in the end she got the last laugh and now ranks highly among the saints. The convent here was built on her birthplace, and there's another convent in town where she served as a nun. And all the shops in between the two convents sell pictures of her, and little sweets made by the nuns called Santa Teresa's egg yolks.

Here are some bits and pieces of the city, mostly butting up against the walls. As you can see, the city is unusually clean and empty, and generally lacked the atmosphere of a real medieval town.

Since the walls are the city's chief claim to fame, we did the obvious thing and walked around them. the city seems to have shifted a bit since the walls were built, with the part inside the city shrinking and feeling pretty empty, but newer parts developing outside the perimeter, now that the threat of Moorish invasions has receded.

115. Avila

We then continued driving, through some very nice mountain scenery, to the only sizeable town in the area, Avila. Avila began life as a Roman town, and generally followed the historical path of Toledo, being conquered by the Moors, then reconquered by the Christians, at around the same dates. The city has always been walled, but the current set of walls dates from the Christian reconquest in the 11th century. Spain has lots of walled cities, but apparently Avila has the best preserved set, and possibly the only ones that still completely encircle the city.