Just some photos from our afternoon walk. One advantage of the city being pretty much neglected over the last five centuries is that it had no need to grow beyond the city walls. So it's easy to romp around in nature just minutes from the city. Of course, the big disadvantage, that nature around Toledo is pretty scraggly, somewhat negates this. Anyway, it's a great way to get some final shots of the city, and afterwards we met Jose and drove back to Madrid.
The city is built in a kink in the Tajo River, which is crossed by two very picturesque bridges. The river used to be more impressive, but it's fairly polluted, and a lot smaller, than it used to be in its prime. We crossed the bridge and walked around outside the city wall for a different perspective.
Just one more church and then we're done, and this one's pretty cool. The church was founded by the famous Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, who as you probably remember from your history classes united Spain, kicked the Moors out of Granada, their last Spanish city, then kicked out all the Moors and Jews from Spain for good measure. Oh, and they sent Christopher Columbus to claim America for them as well. The busy couple built the church in thanks for some victory over the Moors, and planned on being buried here. They changed their minds later and chose Granada after its reconquering. In a questionable decorating choice, the facade of the church is decorated with chains (see below), each representing a newly liberated city. It's got a great cloister attached, intricately carved and surrounding a nice patch of lawn, complete with orange trees.
Sorry for the really odd photo, but it's where we had lunch, and it's the only photo I could find on the net. Toledo is well known for its partridge, and this restaurant's name is Spanish for partridge. And we ordered partridge, which is all they serve. And that's a blog record for the number of times partridge was used in a single post!
Even though there's only one little mosque in Toledo, all the buildings in Toledo show strong Moorish influence in the architecture. The Church of San Roman, pictured here with the beautiful frescoes, is a good example. It looks like a mosque covered with paintings of apostles, but it was actually built from the start as a church. It now houses a boring Visigoth museum, but it's well worth seeing the church and ignoring the exhibits. The plainer arched building shown here is one of Toledo's two synagogues, which looks identical to a mosque. Actually Toledo's most famous church is Santo Tome, but that's just because of one El Greco's painting, his most famous. You'd have to really like the painting, because the church itself is ugly, so I didn't include a photo.
During the four centuries of Moorish rule, Toledo was a leading cultural center. The existing Christians were allowed to worship as usual, and the city also was very welcoming to Jews, who tended to be chased out of most other places. At the time, Christian Europe was pretty much a cultural black hole, lots of illiterate clans killing one another, while the Muslim world 
maintained the knowledge of the Ancient Romans while adding many new discoveries to this base. So the intermingling of faiths in Toledo served a key role in disseminating this knowledge to Christian Europe, which in turn gave rise to the Renaissance.
When Toledo was reconquered, the Christians didn't exactly return the favor. They eventually threw out both the Jews and Muslims from Spain, which decimated Toledo, and to make matters worse, they moved the capital to Madrid. This cultural destruction was matched architecturally as well, and only this tiny mosque remains from the four centuries of Moorish rule. It was spared only because the Christians found a figure of Christ that had been glowing in the dark of the building's basement throughout the occupation. The tenacity of this figure supposedly showed the superiority of Christianity, although preventing the city from being occupied by the Moors in the first place would have been more impressive. God works in mysterious ways I guess.
Just behind the Alcazar is the sixteenth century Hospital of Santa Cruz. As the name implies, it was originally built as a hospital, and a very pretty one at that. At the time medical theory held that the environment surrounding a patient was as important as the medical treatment being prescribed. That was probably true then, since medical treatment was pretty similar to exorcisms. It's now a museum, with no particular focus, but very interesting nonetheless. It's probably got the best collection of El Greco paintings in Toledo (probably Spain's most famous painter, who lived in Toledo). But it's also got a very good ceramics collection and lots of bits and pieces of Toledo culture, well worth a visit.
The Alcazar, like the Cathedral, is another building that's impossible to photograph from within the city. There has been a fort here, at Toledo's highest point, since Roman times, but it's been destroyed and rebuilt so many times that very little remains of the older versions. The fort took on its present shape in the sixteenth century, but that only meant that subsequent versions kept the same design. Its most recent destruction took place in the Spanish Civil War, in 1936. The city of Toledo sided with the Republican government, but the local army supported the rebel Fascists and barricaded themselves in the Alcazar. The city tried for many months to capture the rebels by destroying the building, eventually reducing it to rubble. But the army stayed lodged in tunnels below the rubble, until the Fascists sent additional troops to occupy Toledo and free the remaining Alcazar defenders. The Alcazar was rebuilt by Franco as an exact replica of the destroyed building, and dedicated as a museum to the glory of Fascism. Understandably the fort no longer serves that function in these post-fascist days, but I'm not sure what function it does serve since it was closed for renovation during our visit.
Here are a few photos of Toledo we took from somewhere elevated obviously, and that's usually a cathedral. I don't remember climbing up this cathedral, but I can't remember any other place where these could have been taken. So I'll include them here, but I can't guarantee it's right. Sorry for any disappointment this may cause.
The interior of the cathedral is stunning, among the world's best in my opinion. There's plenty to keep you occupied here, with a couple dozen chapels off the main church, each wildly decorated and with lots of history. There are lots of kings and cardinals buried here, an intricately carved choir (pictured) and a gothic extravaganza behind the altar, telling the entire story of the New Testament if you have the patience to read the story that stretches all the way to the ceiling.
One historical oddity is the Capilla Mozarabe. 
After the Roman empire fell, the various barbarian tribes began to develop their own versions of Christianity and way of worshipping in church. In 1086, the popes decided to stamp out all these variations and force everyone to adopt one standard church service. Toledo had just been reconquered from the Moors, and its citizens were in no mood to jettison their "Visigoth mass" in favor of the new Roman variety. They revolted, and the church decided to settle the matter the old fashioned way, through the two types of bibles in a fire and see what happens. As it turned out, the Roman bible was carried out of the fire by a gust of wind, while the Visigoth bible stayed in the fire but never burned. So the contest was declared a tie, and both rites were allowed to be conducted, but only in Toledo Cathedral.
The Capilla Mozarabe in a small corner of the cathedral still conducts this Visigoth mass, the only service other than the Roman rite still allowed by the Catholic church. Pretty much nobody attends other than the priest, but in general today's Spain has one of the lowest church attendance rates in the world, pretty surprising considering its hyperreligious history.
Just some photos of the center of town. These came from different parts of the day and different parts of the city, but I'm just collecting them all here in random fashion. There are no straight streets in Toledo, which makes it a very confusing place to get around. The tourist office provides walking maps, but they're pretty much impossible to follow, so you'll spend most of the day wandering up and down the crooked streets looking for some church or mosque. But the streets are pretty, so that's half the fun.
Jose (the driver) was a very nice guy, but we definitely got off on the wrong foot with him. Like all tourist drivers and guides the world over, he suffers from an obsession with getting kickbacks from souvenir sellers. Even though you're paying a ridiculous fee, then giving a huge tip, every driver and guide devotes most of their time figuring out how they can get you into a souvenir shop, carpet store, jeweler etc so they can get a commission. Jose was no exception, so the minute we arrived in this beautiful city he drove right up to a shop selling steel swords and other metal stuff. Apparently that's a special skill of Toledo, but it still doesn't mean I want it, and it's certainly not the first thing I want to do when I get to a new place. So we ducked into the shop, wandered around then fled, whereupon Jose tried to take us to another sword store, not understanding that we weren't unhappy with the sword selection at the first store, but rather with the whole idea of buying swords.
We convinced Jose that we wanted to see the cathedral first, which conveniently has eight different entrances, so we were able to sneak out and lose him for the rest of the day.
On Wednesday, we met our driver Jose and drove to Toledo, about ninety minutes south of Madrid. The drive anywhere around Madrid is pretty boring, suburban sprawl and traffic jams, followed by desolate landscape, since Madrid is in the center of a vast, arid plateau. So the sight of Toledo is a welcome reason, since it's on a hill, which is rare, and surrounded by water, even rarer. With these geographical advantages, it's immediately clear why this city has been a major center of civilization since the time of the Roman Empire. The two buildings that dominate the skyline are, as usual in Spain, the cathedral and the alcazar (fortress). The city tumbles down the hill toward the river from there, in a distinctive architectural style called Mudejar, which combines Moorish and Christian styles. 
