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Toledo is located on a steep cliff surrounded by the Tagus River, which gives it a strategic defensive position that has favored its occupation since prehistory.
It began as a Folk town in the Bronze Age, until the Roman Empire conquered it in 192 BC. C., of this time numerous archaeological remains are conserved distributed by the city.
The Romans were the first to give it the name of Toletum, whose meaning would come to be raised or raised.
The next to occupy the city were the Visigoths, in the 6th century King Leovigildo decided to establish here the capital of his empire.
After the Visigoths the city passed into the hands of the Muslims, who gave it the appearance we see today with narrow and steep streets, many of them without exit.
The most representative that is conserved of that time is the Mosque of the Christ of the Light, the Mosque of the Turnerías or the Puerta de Alcántara.
In the year 1085 the Christians incorporated the city to the Kingdom of Castile, being King Alfonso VI, although a policy of respect to the people and the Muslim goods was maintained.
Since then it was the capital of the Kingdom of Castile, title that previously held the city of Burgos.
Since the Jews were already installed in Toledo since the time of the Visigoths, when the Christians entered to form it, they created an amalgam of three cultures that coexisted in harmony, leaving each of them their mark on the city.
The synagogue of Santa María la Blanca and the Transito Synagogue are nowadays preserved in the Hebrew culture, the latter currently houses the Sephardic Museum.
In 1226, by the will of King Ferdinand III, the construction of the Cathedral of Toledo began, on the ground where the old Great Mosque was located.
From the fourteenth century the environment of multicultural tolerance began to disappear progressively, being the peak when the Catholic Monarchs created the Court of the Inquisition in 1485 and the Decree of Expulsion of the Jews in the year 1492.
They also ordered the construction of the Monastery of San Juan de los Reyes as a resting place, although they were finally buried in the Royal Chapel of Granada.
In the sixteenth century, after quelling the Revolt of the Communities, the Emperor Charles I of Spain and V of Germany ordered to build in Toledo large Renaissance samples worthy of the capital of the Great Spanish Empire, the Alcázar being its main example.
The remodeling of Puerta Nueva de Bisagra and Puerta del Cambrón was also carried out.
In the year 1561 the king Felipe II decides to transfer the court and the capital to Madrid, with what the city lost much of its political and social weight.
Toledo became a city almost exclusively conventual, religious orders occupied the old palaces uninhabited by the transfer of the court to the new capital.
During the Spanish Civil War, the Alcázar de Toledo became a symbol, since the rebels who resisted during two months the siege of the republican forces took refuge there.
Nowadays Toledo is the capital of the Autonomous Community of Castilla La Mancha and one of the most visited cities in Spain, due to the large number of historical monuments it preserves.
In 1986 its historic center was declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco.
To learn more about the history of Toledo and its main monuments you can sign up for a guided tour, a tour of the mysteries, an underground route, a tour of the templars or a tour of the three cultures.
