Toledo, take 0

We (Margaret and I) followed Michael Scot to Toledo in Spain. Well, we travelled eight centuries after him and by train but his memory took us there. Setting aside the myths and romances, his place in the history of science rests on the translation work he began in Toledo. It's one of the key locations in his story, the first place - almost - that he appears in reliably recorded history. I would learn nothing not already known about him by physically going there but I would come a little closer to his world. Barely digested reading would start to be knocked into some sort of understandable shape. Our trip to Sicily worked well in this spirit.

From the maps, we knew we were dealing with quite a small city, its central, historic quarters easily explored on foot. "A few days should do it," we thought, planning other stops out and back on the return train journey. That was a mistake. Toledo is a very rich, dense, multicultural stew ("I found it a bit overwhelming," said a friend, comparing notes on our return). Of course one can wander the streets, take in the cathedral and a couple of other historic sites in a day or two but you don't even start to get under its skin until you've been there for a few days. If I go back (hope so!) it'll be for a week at least.

"In a land where all is old, men marvel at the antiquity of this city" says Calvert. Romans, Visigoths, Moors in turn held sway until it passed in 1085 to the control of Alfonso VI of Castile. A great city of the bibliophilic Muslim world became accessible to Christians and word spread of the riches to be found there, works of the classical world preserved in Arabic editions as well as expositions and developments of the Muslim thinkers. The Arabic and Jewish inhabitants were also critical, invaluable partners in the translation effort. Multiculturalism has always fostered the development and dissemination of knowledge and ideas.

Violet Moller's book, The Map of Knowledge is a great overview of the preservation of classical learning in the Arabic world and its transmission to Christendom. The chapter on Toledo focuses on Gerard of Cremona who made his way there sometime in the middle of the 12th century. Gerard is still remembered particularly for his translation of Ptolemy's Almagest but he was only one of several translators working there towards the end of the 12th century. One often reads of "the Toledo translators", even although it's unclear whether they were an organised group working under somebody's auspices, or just a collection of individuals drawn to Toledo's unique attractions. Michael Scot's arrival there sometime around the beginning of the 13th places him in the second wave.

Violet Moller writes about Gerard's arrival in Toledo: "He would have crossed the gorge over the old Roman Alcantara Bridge and then begun the steep climb up the narrow alleyways into the city. It is easy to imagine the Toledo he found himself in, because it has changed very little since. The narrow alleyways are still steep and shaded, the shops still sell a dizzying array of knives and swords, the glittering blades neatly fanned out on velvet cushions, guarded by fearsome suits of armour..." Ms Moller is really good at these alluring descriptions - certainly didn't dissuade me from going there. But this is a book about medieval Toledo, not any sort of modern travel guide, and she doesn't mention the biggest difference from the Middle Ages: the thousands of people wandering around, taking photographs, filing through the historical sites, going, "this is just like the Middle Ages".

We arrived about 10 PM on a Saturday evening, about an hour later than planned thanks to a train delay earlier in the day. I had read that Toledo is a very popular day trip from Madrid but that it gets much quieter in the evening so people overnighting are favoured. It was rather shocking, then, to find the squares jumping, queues for all the bars and restaurants, people milling about exploring even the wee, off-the-beaten-track lanes, even at 1130 at night. We gave up on finding something to eat and took refuge in the only bar we could find a seat in. O'brien's had very little "local colour" of the sort tourists desire but possibly offered a more authentic experience of real, 21st century Toledans. A very welcome refuge late on a long, hot day. Five stars.

For about 24 hours I thought we had made a terrible mistake, coming to somewhere so historically interesting that it is completely swamped by tourists. It began to dawn on us, however, that we had arrived at the busiest possible time of the week and the experience improved immensely after the weekend - still busy but not overwhelming and not so much until late morning (I even googled "Toledo over-tourism" and learned that, despite the pressure of numbers, the city in fact does quite a good job of managing its visitors in a way that minimises their impact on its full-time inhabitants).

Here you see the Puente de San Martin which was constructed in the 14th century - after Scot's time there but still a long time ago. Note the tour buses parked at the far side. Every few minutes one of these buses would arrive to disgorge a party of tourists; an example can be seen here making its way towards the city. We rubbed shoulders with many such groups during our visit, trooping along more or less dutifully behind their guides, pausing to inspect solemnly some architectural or historical marvel before marching on to the next. I shouldn't be too critical. Their introductions to what they were seeing were doubtless much more structured and complete than our self-guided meanderings, although the guides seemed to vary enormously in expertise and enthusiasm and they did not get anything like as much time as we took just to look. Probably I needed a couple of our valuable days to start really seeing the city, that has been there for hundreds of years, behind the cloud of our fellow tourists in the foreground.

After Toledo, take 2, really about sporadic blogging, this is probably "Toledo, take 0", preliminaries and some first impressions. Maybe now, months after the actual events, I can put "Toledo, take 1" together.