Toledo: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Toledo had one of the largest and richest Jewish communities in medieval Europe — the Jews of Sefarad called it the Jerusalem of Spain — and its quarter on the western side of the hill kept at least ten synagogues. Two still stand, and one of them is now the museum of the Sephardic world. Two hours, steep in places; the synagogues close on Monday.
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A short history of Toledo
The Romans called the city Toletum, and in the 6th century it became the capital of the Visigothic kingdom. In 711 it was captured by the Muslims, and in 1085 Alfonso VI, King of Castile, took it. In the following centuries Christians, Muslims and Jews lived here side by side, and at the 'School of Translators' works of science and philosophy were translated from Arabic into Latin. Two medieval synagogues still stand here, and one of them, El Tránsito, was built in 1357 by Samuel ha-Levi, the king's treasurer. In 1577 the painter El Greco came to the city and lived here until his death. In 1986 it was declared a World Heritage Site.
The ten best sights in Toledo
1Santa María la BlancaA synagogue of white horseshoe arches, built around 1180
2Synagogue of El Tránsito1357, Hebrew carved in the walls; the Sephardic Museum is inside
3School of TranslatorsWhere Jews, Muslims and Christians turned Arabic science into Latin
4Toledo CathedralThe primate cathedral of Spain; El Greco in the sacristy
5Santo ToméThe church of El Greco’s Burial of the Count of Orgaz
6Museo del GrecoA house of El Greco’s time with his apostles series
7Mezquita del Cristo de la LuzA tiny mosque of the year 999, with its date carved over the door
8San Juan de los ReyesThe Catholic Monarchs’ monastery, with captives’ chains on its walls
9Convento de San ClementeNuns selling marzipan through a turning hatch
10Plaza de ZocodoverThe main square, an Arab livestock market once
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What is an audio walk?
Tours in Toledo →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Toledo:
Free walking tours in Toledo
The Jewish quarter of Toledo
Toledo had one of the largest and richest Jewish communities in medieval Europe — the Jews of Sefarad called it the Jerusalem of Spain — and its quarter on the western side of the hill kept at least ten synagogues. Two still stand, and one of them is now the museum of the Sephardic world. Two hours, steep in places; the synagogues close on Monday.
- Synagogue of El Tránsito · Built in 1357 by Samuel ha-Levi Abulafia, treasurer to King Pedro I of Castile, with the king’s permission at a time when new synagogues were forbidden. The walls are covered in carved Hebrew — psalms, and an inscription praising the king and Samuel himself. A few years later Samuel fell from favour and died in the king’s prison. The building is now the Sephardic Museum.
- Santa María la Blanca · Built around 1180 as the main synagogue of the community, by Muslim builders for Jewish patrons in a Christian kingdom: five aisles of white horseshoe arches on octagonal pillars with carved pine-cone capitals. After the riots of 1391 and the preaching of Vicente Ferrer it was seized and made a church in 1411, which is how it survived.
- Museo del Greco · El Greco, a Greek from Crete, settled in Toledo in 1577 and lived in the Jewish quarter, in rooms of a palace that had belonged to Samuel ha-Levi. This museum recreates a house of his time and keeps his series of the apostles and a view of the city.
- Santo Tomé · In this parish church hangs El Greco’s Burial of the Count of Orgaz, painted in 1586: below, Toledo’s nobles in black at a funeral, and above, heaven opening to receive the count’s soul. The boy in the corner is El Greco’s son, and the date of his birth is written on the handkerchief in his pocket.
- San Juan de los Reyes · Ferdinand and Isabella built this monastery as their own burial place, and on its outer walls hang the iron chains of Christian captives freed when Granada fell. In the same year, 1492, the same monarchs signed the expulsion of the Jews, and the Jews of this quarter left Toledo. In the end the monarchs were buried in Granada.
- Puente de San Martín · The medieval bridge at the bottom of the Jewish quarter, where the Tagus wraps around the town in a deep gorge. The story is that the builder realised his arch would fall when the scaffolding came down, and his wife set fire to the scaffolding at night so that it would look like an accident and he could rebuild it properly.
The city of three cultures
After the Christians took Toledo in 1085 the town became, for two centuries, the place where the learning of the Arab world crossed into Europe, translated by teams of Jews, Muslims and Christians working together. Its buildings still mix all three: a mosque, a cathedral and the scholars’ house. Two hours, uphill to the cathedral and down to the gates.
- School of Translators · In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, under Archbishop Raymond and then King Alfonso X, scholars here translated Aristotle, Ptolemy, the Arab doctors and astronomers into Latin and Castilian. A typical team was a Jew who read the Arabic aloud in Castilian and a Christian who wrote it down in Latin.
- Toledo Cathedral · Built over two and a half centuries on the site of the great mosque, and the seat of the primate of Spain. Behind the high altar is the Transparente, a baroque explosion of marble angels lit through a hole cut in the Gothic vault. In the sacristy hangs El Greco’s Disrobing of Christ, which the canons at first refused to pay for.
- Convento de San Clemente · Toledo’s marzipan is said to have been invented by the nuns of this convent during a famine in 1212, from the only things in their storeroom, almonds and sugar. The nuns still sell it through a revolving hatch in the wall, so that buyer and seller never see each other.
- Plaza de Zocodover · The name is Arabic for the market of beasts, and for centuries this was the town’s market, its bullring and its place of execution. Above it rises the Alcázar, the fortress on the highest point of the hill, rebuilt after its siege in 1936 and now the museum of the Spanish army.
- Mezquita del Cristo de la Luz · A small mosque built in 999 — the date is carved in Kufic letters in the brick of the façade — with nine little domes, each vaulted differently. The legend says that when the Christians rode in, a king’s horse knelt in front of the wall here, and inside it they found a crucifix with a lamp still burning since the Visigoths hid it.
- Puerta de Bisagra · The main gate of the city walls, rebuilt in the sixteenth century with the double-headed eagle of Charles V, the emperor who made Toledo his capital before his son Philip II moved the court to a small town called Madrid in 1561.
Windmills and castles of La Mancha
South-east of Toledo the hills flatten into La Mancha, the high plain of Don Quixote: wheat, vines, saffron and windmills on the ridges, and castles on every rise from the centuries of war between the Christian and Moorish kingdoms. A full day and a car; the light on the plain is best late in the day.
- Mirador del Valle · Start across the river: from this road on the far side of the Tagus gorge, the whole of Toledo rises on its rock — cathedral, Alcázar, the roofs of the Jewish quarter — exactly the view El Greco painted. At sunset the stone turns gold.
- Castillo de Almonacid · A ruined Moorish castle on a hill above olive groves, one of the chain of strongholds that guarded the approaches to Toledo. The village below fought a battle against Napoleon’s army in 1809, and the castle walls look over the field.
- Orgaz · The village whose lord is the count in El Greco’s great painting. Gonzalo Ruiz, lord of Orgaz, died in 1323 and left money to the church of Santo Tomé in Toledo; the legend says that Saint Stephen and Saint Augustine came down from heaven to lay him in his tomb.
- Tembleque · A main square of the seventeenth century surrounded by two storeys of wooden galleries painted red, built so that the whole village could watch the bullfights held in it. It is one of the most beautiful squares in La Mancha, and almost nobody stops.
- Consuegra · A line of white windmills and a castle along a ridge over the plain — the landscape of the chapter in which Don Quixote charges the windmills, believing them to be giants. One of the mills still grinds once a year, during the saffron festival in October, when the region harvests the crocus flowers by hand.
- Royal Palace of Aranjuez · The spring palace of the kings of Spain, set among gardens and avenues of plane trees where the Tagus and the Jarama meet. Joaquín Rodrigo, blind from the age of three, wrote the Concierto de Aranjuez in 1939 about these gardens, and its slow movement became one of the best-known pieces of Spanish music.
Getting to Toledo and getting around
- Madrid Airport · About an hour by car; or the metro to Atocha and the train
- Toledo Station · Thirty-three minutes from Madrid by fast train, in a neo-Mudéjar station
Cheap eats in Toledo
Toledo’s sweet is marzipan, made with almonds and sugar and shaped into little figures and eels, sold by the nuns through a hatch and by the pastry shops by weight. The savoury food is La Mancha’s: carcamusas, a stew of pork, peas and tomato served in a clay dish as a tapa; partridge in the Toledo style; and Manchego cheese with a glass of the local red. A tapa comes with a drink in many bars.
- Convento de San Clemente · Marzipan through the turning hatch
- Plaza de Zocodover · Marzipan figures from the pastry shops on the square
- Puerta del Sol · Carcamusas and a tapa in the bars below the gate
- Consuegra · Saffron from the plain, sold by the gram
- Tembleque · Manchego cheese and wine in the village
- Royal Palace of Aranjuez · The famous strawberries of Aranjuez in spring
Museums in Toledo
Toledo is a museum city: the painter El Greco, the two surviving synagogues, a mosque of the year 999 and a Gothic cathedral full of treasure, all within a few hundred metres on one hill. A combined ticket covers several of them.
- Synagogue of El Tránsito · The Sephardic Museum; closed Mondays
- Santo Tomé · The Burial of the Count of Orgaz
- Museo del Greco · His apostles and a view of Toledo
- Toledo Cathedral · The Transparente and the sacristy paintings
- Museo de Santa Cruz · A Renaissance hospital of art and archaeology
- Alcázar · The army museum on the top of the hill
Nature and day trips near Toledo
The Tagus loops almost all the way round Toledo in a deep granite gorge, and a path follows the river below the walls. Beyond the town is La Mancha’s plain — wheat, vines and windmills — and the river gardens of Aranjuez.
- Mirador del Valle · The view across the gorge at sunset
- Puente de San Martín · The river path, and the zip line over the Tagus
- Puente de Alcántara · The start of the riverside walk round the town
- Consuegra · The windmill ridge over the plain
- Royal Palace of Aranjuez · Gardens and avenues along two rivers
Things to do in Toledo with kids
Toledo is steep and its lanes are narrow, but children like the swords in the shop windows, the zip line over the river and the knights. The great hit nearby is Puy du Fou, a park of shows about Spanish history.
- Puy du Fou España · History shows by day, a giant show at night
- Puente de San Martín · The zip line across the river
- Alcázar · Armour, soldiers and swords
- Consuegra · Windmills and a castle to climb
- Castillo de Guadamur · A real castle with towers
- Plaza de Zocodover · The little tourist train round the town
Holy places in Toledo
In Toledo the three faiths stand side by side in stone: a mosque of 999, two synagogues of the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, and the primate cathedral of Spain. The synagogues survived because they were turned into churches; the community that built them was expelled in 1492.
- Santa María la Blanca · The white-arched synagogue of 1180
- Synagogue of El Tránsito · The synagogue of Samuel ha-Levi, 1357
- Mezquita del Cristo de la Luz · Nine domes, built in 999
- Toledo Cathedral · The primate cathedral of Spain
- San Juan de los Reyes · The monarchs of 1492 and their cloister
Nightlife in Toledo
Toledo empties in the evening when the day-trippers return to Madrid, and that is the time to be in it: the lit cathedral, the lanes of the Jewish quarter in silence, and the view of the whole town from across the gorge. In June the Corpus Christi procession covers the streets in awnings and flowers.
- Mirador del Valle · The lit town across the gorge at night
- Plaza de Zocodover · Terraces on the main square
- Puerta del Sol · Tapas bars below the walls
- Toledo Cathedral · The cathedral square lit after dark
- Puy du Fou España · The night show, The Dream of Toledo
Frequently asked questions about Toledo
What is there to see in Toledo?
The top sights in Toledo are Santa María la Blanca, Synagogue of El Tránsito and School of Translators. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Toledo?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Toledo without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Toledo?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Toledo, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The Jewish quarter of Toledo.
How do you get to Toledo and get around?
The main ways are Madrid Airport and Toledo Station. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Toledo, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Toledo that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Toledo for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.