Segovia

Human presence around Segovia stretches back tens of thousands of years. Neanderthal occupation has been identified at the Abrigo del Molino and San Lázaro sites in the Eresma valley, just metres from where the Alcázar now stands, making them the earliest known inhabitants of the area. Later Palaeolithic activity, from the Magdalenian period, has been found at the Peña de Santana site on the slopes of El Parral, and evidence of the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age turns up near the Abrigo del Molino and in other spots around the town's outskirts. A Celtiberian hill fort occupied the Alcázar site before Roman times. Segovia was loyal to Rome, which brought consequences: the Lusitanian leader Viriato attacked the city, and the ancient writer Frontinus records that its people chose to watch the execution of their own families rather than betray their Roman allegiance.

Under Rome, Segovia belonged to the judicial district of Clunia. In the Visigoth period it became an episcopal seat, subordinate to the archdiocese of Toledo. Long thought to have been abandoned after the Islamic invasion, a 2014 discovery of an Arab gateway in the Puerta de Santiago proved continuous occupation between roughly the eighth and eleventh centuries. The city was taken by Fernán González around 920–923 and added to the County of Castile, though constant military pressure prevented stable settlement. The real turning point came after Alfonso VI of León took Toledo in 1085; his son-in-law Count Raymond of Burgundy, together with Bishop Pedro de Agén, began repopulating Segovia in 1088 with settlers from northern Iberia and beyond the Pyrenees.

Through the Middle Ages Segovia grew rich on wool and textile manufacturing, positioned as it was on the transhumance routes. By the late medieval period it had a substantial Jewish quarter, a thriving cloth industry, fine Gothic architecture, and served as a royal court for the Trastámara dynasty. Alfonso X had already fitted out the Alcázar as a royal residence in the second half of the thirteenth century. The city's most celebrated moment came on 13 December 1474, when Isabel the Catholic was proclaimed Queen of Castile in the church of San Miguel. Segovia later joined the Revolt of the Comunidades, led locally by Juan Bravo. Despite the uprising's defeat, the city continued to grow, reaching its sixteenth-century peak population in 1594, before the plague of 1599 killed a significant portion of its inhabitants.

In 1985, Segovia's old town and its aqueduct were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The aqueduct, standing in the Plaza del Azoguejo, is the city's defining landmark. Its construction date is unknown, somewhere in the late first or early second century, and it is considered the most important example of Roman civil engineering in Spain.

The Alcázar sits on its granite crag above the confluence of the Eresma and Clamores rivers. Its famous turreted towers were rebuilt after a fire in 1862, unlike the original Mudéjar ceilings of the nearby Monastery of San Antonio el Real, which date from 1455 and survive intact. That monastery began as a hunting lodge of King Enrique IV.

Its church has a Mudéjar ceiling, and the cloister, now a museum, contains further examples worked in the Nasrid technique. Ten nuns still live in the convent. The Cathedral of Santa María and San Frutos is the last Gothic cathedral built in Spain, regarded as the masterpiece of the Basque-Castilian Gothic style and known as "La Dama de las Catedrales." It is the city's third cathedral and preserves the cloister of its predecessor, which was destroyed during the War of the Comunidades in 1520.

Juan and Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón worked on its construction. Consecrated in 1768, it measures 105 metres long, 50 metres wide, and 33 metres high at the central nave, with eighteen chapels and three doorways: the Puerta del Perdón, the Puerta de San Frutos, and the Puerta de San Geroteo. The city walls already existed when Alfonso VI took Segovia from the Arabs; he extended them to a perimeter of three kilometres, with eighty towers, five gates, and several posterns.

Built mainly in granite ashlar, with some Roman funerary stones reused in the fabric, the walls today retain three gates, San Cebrián, Santiago (Mudéjar in character), and San Andrés, which once gave access to the Jewish quarter, along with the posterns of Consuelo, San Juan, Sol, and Luna. Segovia also holds a remarkable group of Romanesque churches, including San Esteban, San Millán, San Martín, the Santísima Trinidad, San Andrés, San Clemente, Santos Justo y Pastor, the Vera Cruz, and El Salvador. Several monasteries and convents remain active with enclosed religious communities, among them the Monastery of Santa María del Parral, home to the last Hieronymite monks in Spain.

Madrid-Barajas Airport has frequent connections to Segovia. High-speed trains run every 30–60 minutes from Madrid Chamartín, reaching Guiomar station (5 km south of town) in 30 minutes; Bus 11 goes from there to Plaza Artillería beneath the Aqueduct, Bus 12 to the main bus station, both running once or twice per hour. The old Segovia station (1 km from centre, listed as "Segovia" on timetables) has only two regional trains per day from Chamartín, taking two hours; Bus 8 runs from there to the centre.

Buses from Madrid Moncloa run once or twice an hour (80 min); also from Ávila (1 hr) and Salamanca (3 hr 30 min) via Llorente/Avanza. The bus station is on Paseo de Ezequiel González, 300 m south of the Aqueduct. The walled old town is largely pedestrianised and walkable.

Local food highlights include cochinillo (slow-roast suckling pig), roast lamb, judiones bean stew, and ponche segoviano for dessert. La Almuzara at Marqués del Arco 3 is vegetarian/vegan, open Wednesday–Sunday 12:00–16:00 and 20:00–00:00. La Tau