Historic City of Toledo

Successively a Roman municipium, the capital of the Visigothic Kingdom, a fortress of the Emirate of Córdoba, an outpost of the Christian kingdoms fighting the Moors and, in the 16th century, the temporary seat of supreme power under Charles V, Toledo is the repository of more than 2,000 years of history. Its masterpieces are the product of heterogeneous civilizations in an environment where the existence of three major religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – was a major factor.

Criterion (ⅰ): Overall, the City of Toledo is an entity of unique and remarkable artistic accomplishments ranging from Visigothic to Baroque architecture of the early eighteenth century.

Criterion (ⅱ): Toledo exerted a great influence on the Visigothic Kingdom, which spread to Narbonne in France during the Renaissance Period.

Criterion (ⅲ): Toledo bears witness to a number of vanished civilizations, including Rome, which left traces of an amphitheater, canals, and sewage facilities, and the Visigothic Kingdom, which a left castle wall built by King Wamba and handicrafts now kept at the Santa Cruz Museum. The Emirate of Córdoba created many Islamic style artistic monuments.

Criterion (ⅳ): Toledo contains many masterpieces of architecture dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries including the Monastery of San Juan de los Reyes, Grand Cathedral, Cathedral San Juan Bautista, Hospital of Santa Cruz, Puerta Nueva de Bisagra. These religious, military, and hospital buildings are good examples of architecture dating back to Spain’s Golden Age. Toledo, which emerged during the Middle Age, is the birthplace of the Mudéjar style. Monuments of the Mudéjar style, which combined structural and ornamental elements of both Visigothic and Islamic art and fused them with other later emerging styles, include Santiago del Arrabal (13th century), Moorish workshops and the Puerta del Sol area (14th century), the wainscot panel walls of the Hospital of Santa Cruz, and a meeting place for priests in the Grand Cathedral (15th and 16th centuries).

Country: Spain
Location: Autonomous Community of Castile-La Mancha
Coordinates: N39 52 0.8 W4 1 45.9
Inscription year: 1986
Inscription criteria: ⅰ,ⅱ,ⅲ,ⅳ