This impressive Moorish monument is fashioned of rough stone, above the brilliant Vega, with the arid hills around. The towers are of brown granite, and above span the vaulted entrance. The sides form a semi-circular and a half square tower, and the interior is divided into three compartments. There is a great centre ogival arch, resting on two columns with Moorish
inscriptions; from the zones of ornamental arches enlaced, bayed above and horseshoe-shaped beneath, break away other architectural flourishes of raised ogival, the zones divided by angles with the points inward. Behind the great arch, there is another horseshoe arch, and above it is a round medallion, with a relief, of the Virgin offering the chasuble to St Ildefonso; beyond are two simple ogival arches, united to form the rising line of the portcullis, and then another horseshoe arch in the back façade forms the same design. Above are three similar little arches, with railings, and in the semi-circular tower below are three apertures for barbaric hostilities, in each façade joining the central compartment. Each aperture, in front, has an ornamental bayed arch, placed above three corbels crowned with towers turreted in pyramidal capitals. Within, a series of Arabian arches—the quadrangular tower only adorned with little Moorish arches. The age of this most exquisite gate is uncertain. It is believed to be of the second period of Moorish architecture in Toledo, that is, tenth century, with alterations as far as the thirteenth. While the architecture is perfectly Moorish, there is some indication of Christian influence—in the use of a stone not generally used by the Moors, and also in the reliefs of the Virgin and St Ildefonso, and in the little marble relief of the two women and the man, supposed to perpetuate the tale of the Governor Fernando Gonzalez, Lord of Yegros, whom San Fernando, that uncompromising king, sentenced to death for betraying two women: by some believed to represent St John the Baptist, Herodias and her mother. The simple traveller, who loves righteousness and truth, will stick to the avenging sovereign sentencing thus summarily the rascal governor. But it is like the figure in the central arch of the Bridge of San Martin. Believe what you like best. Fernando may have boiled his enemies in pots of water over huge logs, or roasted them alive before roaring fires. He himself was such an admirable fellow in his private life that we are constrained to believe his enemies merited such treatment. He died during the third period of Moorish architecture in Spain, and left all he possessed to the Hospital of Santiago. It was perhaps a little excessive on the part of St Fernando, after chopping off the governor’s perfidious head, to confiscate all his property and bestow it on the poor. The governor’s relations might justly have regarded themselves as defrauded. But those were the happy days when subjects had no rights, and only breathed by divine permission of the sovereign. Young people who fell in love without the king’s leave were dispatched to prison or a nunnery. In the leisure that war and revolt occasionally allowed him, the king made and unmade marriages; and if, glancing from his palace windows, he chanced to see a man pass by who looked as if, at some future date, he might be tempted to commit a crime, he ordered his instant execution, in the interests of humanity. Sure, indeed was it worth while to be a King in those delightful days, a life never monotonous for the lack of surprises, never empty of vicissitudes and every odd and stupendous stroke of fortune.
A word must be said about the legendary Baño de la Cava. The probability is that this celebrated and picturesque ruin was portion of a turreted bridge that existed before the construction of San Martin, and was swept away in one of the inundations that wrought at periods so much damage to the town. The ruin is undoubtedly Moorish, and Moorish letters may be traced on one of the broken columns, which would prove it posterior to the Berber invasion under Tarik. The height of the old bridge is sufficiently indicated to show us that a wild rush of water from the upper rocky defile as it thunders down the gorge would quickly carry off the stoutest construction so lowly placed, hence the exceeding height of the central arch of Tenorio’s bridge, through which the Tagus in its most turbulent hour can gush at will. The ruin is a delightful one, and nothing could be more romantic than its situation. Graceless facts that so ruthlessly demolish poetic legends!
The walls and ramparts are dismantled now, but there are considerable traces of the Visigothic walls of 711, while the twelfth century walls of Alfonso, the conqueror, are naturally more distinct. Quite recent is the easy sloping road that winds up from the bridge of Alcántara to the Zocodover. If one regrets the old double walls that used to guard the city on this side, it must be admitted that there are agreeable compensations. The town is more open to the breezes of the Vega; the new road itself is a comfortable invention as a substitute for the battlemented and rocky altitude it was once to climb, and the pretty Miradero makes a graceful modern note in a mediæval picture. But giving your back to San Servando, and mounting the road of Nuestra Señora de la Valle, you may trace on the other side the broken ramparts in their extreme age and admirable preservation. And leaving the town by the Puerta de Visagra, wander round by the Vega, and here beyond the Puerta Lodada, you will admire the martial aspect of what remains of Wamba’s jagged walls within and the outer walls of Alfonso that run from the Puerta Nueva to the Lunatic Asylum.