TOLEDO
A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE “CITY OF GENERATIONS,” WITH 510 ILLUSTRATIONS
THE origin of Imperial Toledo, “the crown of Spain, the light of the world, free from the time of the mighty Goths,” is lost in the impenetrable mists of antiquity. Mighty, unchangeable, invincible, the city has been described by Wörmann as “a gigantic open-air museum of the architectural history of early Spain, arranged upon a lofty and conspicuous table of rock.”
But while some writers have declared that Toledo is a theatre with the actors gone and only the scenery left, the author does not share the opinion. He believes that the power and virility upon which Spain built up her greatness is reasserting itself. The machinery of the theatre of Toledo is rusty, the pulleys are jammed from long disuse, but the curtain is rising steadily if slowly, and already can be heard the tuning-up of fiddles in its ancient orchestra.
In this belief the author of this volume has not only set forth the story of Toledo’s former greatness, but has endeavoured to place before his readers a panorama of the city as it appears to-day, and to show cause for his faith in the greatness of the Toledo of the future.
UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME
SEVILLE
A HISTORICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT, WITH 300 ILLUSTRATIONS