The Walls

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The Walls

A visit to the mediaeval city must begin with a visit to THE WALLS, the best example of Romanesque military architecture in Spain and a unique model of mediaeval European architecture. The layout is essential to understand a city as it acted as military defence, health cordon, fiscal border and a support for other buildings.

A detailed visit allows one to appreciate how the forms of the walls and turrets adapt to the terrain: the southern walls are not very high due to the natural slope on which they lie, the west and northern become much stronger and the eastern side is where they reach their highest point of development and where it was necessary to reinforce the city's defences - the Alcazar (fortress) was erected here with the two strongest gates, the Alcazar and San Vicente gates, and a defence system including a moat and a barbican built in front of the walls.

Going along the walled enclosure one sees the nine gates that open out into it: the Alcazar, the Peso de la Harina, San Vicente, Mariscal, Carmen, Adaja, Malaventura, Santa or Montenegro and Rastro. Each one of these has a different function and layout. One can also see that the battlements topping the walls and turrets are different despite a seemingly homogenous whole. This is conditioned by them having to serve as a support for other buildings.

Although we do not know the names of the builders, both Christians and Mudéjares probably worked on the walls, the corner friezes and brick work completing a large part of the north and western walls or arches made from brick leading to the turrets in the same area showing us the Mudéjar handwork.

The known facts about this fortification are as follows: a two and a half kilometre perimeter, 88 towers, nine gates, three posterns and a total extension of 33 hectares; these data are not sufficient though for a monument which is an essential document in the comprehension and configuration of the city.

The Crónica de la Población de Ávila (Avila Census) dates its construction to the year 1090 and states that Casandro Romano and Florin de Pituenga were the master builders; however, recent research based on the works size, the small number of inhabitants at the beginning of repopulation, detailed study of the walls and the connection to other contemporaneous fortifications has shown that building work must have gone on into the 12th Century and been carried out on top of an earlier wall.

The wall one sees today is fairly well preserved, but for this to have happened different - generally correct - activities were necessary which, independently of their purpose, have been decisive in the image and present state of the citadel.

Our visit will be complete once we climb the bailey, which we can do from the house Casa de las Carnicerías, the door of the Alcázar (fort), or from the arch called Arco del Carmen, from which we can contemplate the urban landscape formed by towers and belfries offered to us by the Avila mountain range and the Valle Amblés; by doing so we will be able to understand this monument that identifies the city, which was and still is an essential element in its urban, social and economic configuration.