Category: Eurotrip

A Walk Through the Prado

A Walk Through the Prado

 

Of all the many things to see and do in Madrid, of all the wonderful parks and museums, of all the shops and restaurants, the Museo del Prado stands out to me as by far the most rewarding place to visit in the city. Considering how many masterpieces are on display, how many of the finest collections of world class artists—El Greco, Velazques, Goya—can be found here, I have no doubt that it must be one of the greatest art museums in the world. The first time I visited, I was in a state of perpetual amazement—and I’m not usually an art enthusiast.

In this post I would like to take you on a guided tour through the museum. But be warned: I am no art expert, and can hardly even be called an amateur. My knowledge of art history and my capacity for intelligent criticism are slim to none. Nevertheless, they say the best way to learn is to teach, so I will try to teach you about this place.

Since it would be neither possible nor desirable to talk about every work in the collection, I will confine my tour to my favorites. Here’s another warning: my descriptions of paintings will be dreadfully boring and pointless unless you look at an image of the paintings yourself. You can’t take photographs of the paintings in the Prado, so I can’t insert my own images. Therefore I recommend you simply search the title of the painting as you read through.

But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. Before I got into the nitty gritty of analyzing the paintings, I have to tell you a bit about the museum itself. (By the way, throughout this post I am relying on the official Prado guidebook as well as what I can find online for information.)

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The Prado

The Prado is located, appropriately enough, on the Paseo del Prado, a long boulevard in the city center that is also home to the Thyssem Museum, not to mention several government offices. From the outside, the building isn’t especially impressive. It is a long neoclassical building, with arches on the first floor and columns on the second; its façade is a dark grey. Near the front entrance is a metal statue of Goya, hat in hand, looking every inch a gentleman. Near another entrance is a wonderful statue of Velazques, slumped in a chair, a brush in one hand and an easel in the other.

The museum was first opened in 1819, under the auspices of King Ferdinand VII. According to the guide book, the model for the modern public museum was the Louvre in Paris, which was opened in 1793 during the Revolution. After the Napoleonic wars, many of the revolutionary ideas in France were disseminated to Spain. Indeed, now that I think about it, the institution of a public museum is quite a revolutionary idea. Consider where these great collections come from; they used to be the personal collections of monarchs, nobles, and the super rich. It was thus a great advance for civilization when the institution of the public museum was created, for it signaled a broader shift in values. Art was to be celebrated as communal heritage, not hoarded as a private prize. But I suppose the old, hoarding model of art appreciation did have its merits, since it is due to the fine taste and acquisitiveness of the erstwhile Spanish monarchs that we have this collection in the first place.

Let’s have a look inside. The vast majority of the museum’s permanent collection is housed on two levels. The floor plans of both are nearly identical. The Prado Museum is a symmetrical structure. In the center are the largest chambers, bookending the building. Connecting these rooms is a wide hallway, the main gallery, with a lovely arched ceiling. To one side of this gallery (left or right, depending which way you’re walking) is a labyrinth of rooms where most of the art is to be found. I find it easy to get a bit disoriented in these rooms, since you must keep turning left and right to get to the next one. But travelers less navigationally challenged than I am will have no trouble.

The two floors are divided chronologically, with the oldest art on the bottom floor and the newer art on the top. The span of time covered by the collection ranges from about 1300 to 1800. (The Reina Sofia has the more modern works.) Unsurprisingly, the majority of the artists on display are Spanish. The Prado is fairly weak on Northern European paintings—though there are some very nice Flemish works here. (The Thyssem Museum just across the road, which I’ll save for another post, is an excellent complement to the Prado, since it is strong in many areas where the Prado is weak.) There are also many works by Tintoretto and especially Titian, who painted for the Spanish monarchs.

Although the museum contains the excellent works by many artists, the heart of the museum, as the guidebook says, is undoubtedly Velazquez. Of his one hundred or so known paintings, nearly half can be found here. Thus with him we find both the most complete and arguably the most impressive collection in the whole museum. It is to him, therefore, that we must now turn.

Velazquez

Diego Velazquez (1599 – 1660) was perhaps the greatest artist of Spain’s greatest age. Born in Seville, he spent much of his life painting for Phillip IV as a court painter. He painted the king, the queen, princesses and princes, court jesters, dwarves, as well as religious and mythological paintings. Velazquez is to Spanish painting what Cervantes is to Spanish literature.

One of my favorite of his works is his Apollo at the Forge of Vulcan, a mythological subject. This paintings depicts the scene in Homer when Apollo tells Vulcan, the crippled god of fire and blacksmiths, that his beautiful wife, Venus, is having an affair with Ares the god of war. It’s marvelous. Apollo, god of light, is clothed in an orange robe; his garlanded head emits rays like the sun itself. He is turned away from the viewer, one hand lifted, as he tells Vulcan the bad news. Before him are several grubby, shirtless men, wearing only brown robes around their waists. They are at work in Vulcan’s forge, surrounded by various tools and anvils; everything in the room is a musty, brownish gray, lending contrast with the bright robe of Apollo. A delicate play of shadows makes the viewer feel the space. The illusion is perfect.

The musculature on these smithies is fantastic—not at all exaggerated, but taut and distinct. Every one of them (I’m not sure which figure is Vulcan and which are his helpers) looks at Apollo in amazement. My favorite is the second man from the right. His eyes pop in astonishment, his jaw hangs slack from his mouth. He looks as though he’s about to drop the hammer he’s carrying. He’s clearly stunned by the news. His skinny face, his curly hair, his five o’clock shadow, and his Greek nose—all is so magnificently done that you wonder whether he will soon turn his head and look straight at you.

Another of my favorites is also a mythological scene: The Feast of Bacchus. Dionysus (or Bacchus), god of wine, sits in the center. He is naked except for a blanket draped over his waist. For a god, his physique is flabby, and his arms are thin. He is placing a garland on the head of one of his revelers, who kneels at the god’s feet. But strangely, Dionysus isn’t looking at what he’s doing; his eyes are turned away, to his right, and a coy smile is playing on his lips. It’s as if he’s thinking about something, a secret that he’s keeping from his followers.

To his left are the revelers, a motley crew of bearded peasants. Every one of them is smiling and drunk. My favorite of these is the seated man immediately to the right of Dionysus (from our perspective). The realism of this face is stupefying. He looks out at you from beneath a black, rimmed hat, tilted back on his head. He smiles, showing white teeth from under a bushy mustache. He looks middle aged, but already his face is wrinkled and careworn. He’s dressed like a peasant, and has the look of a man used to manual labor. Although he is giving a toothy grin, I find something quietly tragic in this face. He smiles because of the drink, because of the merrymaking; he smiles because, for a few brief hours, he can forget his cares, forget his hard life, and lose himself in drink. Is this Dionysus’s secret? Is this why he looks away? Is it that he knows that the happiness he provides is a false happiness, not born from appreciation of what one has, but from forgetfulness of one’s lot?

These are two of my favorites, but they don’t convey the versatility of Velazquez’s art. There is, for example, his Christ on the Cross, which is easily one of the best I’ve seen of this subject. It’s a terribly sad painting, with Jesus’ hanging, face turned down, eyes closed, in front of a pitch black background. Velazquez focuses the whole of the viewer’s attention on the Savior’s body, which hangs limply from the cross. His isolation is devastating; He is totally abandoned in this painting—but for the halo of light around His head.

There is a room full of paintings of court buffoons. Apparently, it’s true that kings used to have people who used to be called (quite unjustly) “freaks of nature.” Velazquez painted many of these buffoons, most of them dwarves; and the paintings are excellent. You might expect the portraits to be condescending or exaggerated, but Velazquez looked upon these subjects with real empathy. There is one portrait in particular, of a bearded dwarf, sitting on the floor, staring intently at the viewer. There is nothing buffoonish or silly in his expression; rather, he looks dignified and serious.

I can’t help comparing these portraits with the many paintings of kings, queens, princes, and princesses in the next room. This is the center of the museum, an octagonal chapel that houses the royal portraits. I have to admit that (apart from Las Meninas) I don’t care for these at all. I find the whole lot frankly ridiculous—not because of Velazquez’s execution, but because of the subjects. Many are equestrian portraits. The king sits on a horse rearing its legs, staring off into the distance. It could potentially be heroic, but the final effect is comical—almost satirical. Philip IV looks more like a buffoon than his buffoons, with his overlong, egg-shaped head; his greasy, red hair; his pale, pasty skin; his oversized, puffy lips; his empty, dull eyes. I’m not judging his job as king—he obviously had good taste in art, at least—but he wasn’t a handsome man.

And the dresses that these poor women had to wear! There is a portrait of Queen Mariana of Austria, for example, and I can’t help feeling both sad and embarrassed for the woman. Her dress is so big you could have a dinner party underneath it, and her enormous hair is a close second. She wears a severe and unhappy expression on her face, perhaps because this getup was so uncomfortable. Fashion is a funny thing. This used to be considered highly dignified—royal, in fact. And now, it’s beyond absurd.

But of course, the shining exception to this Las Meninas. This is Velazquez’s masterpiece, and can fairly be said to be the greatest painting in the whole Prado (though it’s not my personal favorite). It is one of those images, like Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam and Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, that can stick in your mind forever after just one glance. There is too much, and not enough, to be said about it; one could fill a library with analysis and come up short.

First, there is Velazquez himself in the painting, leaning slightly to his left, with a brush in one hand and an easel in another. He is staring right at the viewer, with a thoughtful and serene expression on his face. He looks as though, at any moment, he will begin to paint you, the viewer, as you stand and contemplate him. But what is he painting? Hanging on the other end of the room is a mirror, where we can see a ghostly image of a couple—the king and queen—who Velazquez is presumably in the process of painting.

In the center is the princess Margarita, who also looks right at the viewer. There is something mysterious about his expression. Her head is turned slightly away from us, but she turns her eyes to face us. To her right and left are her maids of honor, the titular meninas, waiting on the princess. But she isn’t interested in them; she’s thinking about something else. What? On the far right of the painting is a dog, looking very sleepy, being bothered by a little girl; and we also see another of the king’s dwarves. On the far side of the room, to the right of the mirror, a man standing in an open doorway. He is one of my favorite parts of the painting. The way he stands, with one foot raised on the stair above him, makes me want to follow him into the scene.

Why is this painting so powerful? At first glance, it’s just a slice of everyday life. Nothing terribly interesting is happening. So why is it so universally celebrated? Well, for one, the composition is perfect. The way the figures are arranged in the space is unsurpassable. But this is a technical perfection. There is something deeper; Velazquez seems to be getting at something. Perhaps the painting is a comment upon art itself. There he stands, painting a royal portrait, in a room already filled with paintings. There he stands, before two of the most powerful people in the world, a guest in their house, working under their patronage. But although Philip IV commanded millions of men, and Velazquez only a brush and paint, whose work has been more enduring?

 

José de Ribera

José de Ribera (1591- 1652) was a contemporary of Velazquez, who was born in Spain but died in Naples. Stylistically, he strikes me as quite close to Velazquez, though he is not as profound. The Prado has an impressive collection of his works, and two in particular have caught my fancy.

The first is his portrait of Democritus (or Archimedes, depending on who you ask). Of course, it is an imagined portrait, but it is done in the same manner as a real one. Democritus stands before you, a quill in one hand, some papers in another. (If you look closely, you can see that these papers are covered in geometrical drawings, which leads me to think it was supposed to be Archimedes.) The man himself is an ugly fellow. He’s going bald, with only a tuft of hair on the top of his head; and on his face is an unkempt beard. His baldness makes his creased forehead looks enormous, adding to the impression of a man devoted to his intellect. However, he is no dull scholar. He smiles at the viewer, a happy and mischievous smile. It is the smile of an old lecher rather than a philosopher. Or perhaps it is just the mischievousness of a man who is above all the things that make us frown; a man who sees life as a silly game. Although every element seems inappropriate—his winking smile, his peasant clothes, his scraggly beard, his balding head—taken together, the whole thing is a convincing portrait of a real philosopher. It’s a wonderful painting.

The next painting I love by Ribera is his Trinity. The first thing to notice is its composition. The work abounds in diagonal symmetry. Seen from a distance, the painting is composed of five diagonal bands, running from the bottom left to the top right. The first band (at the bottom right) is dark blue; the second (formed by the cape on which Jesus is being carried) is white; the third, (formed by the angels) is a mix of black space and flesh colored faces; the next (formed from God the Father’s robes) is bright red; and the last is bright yellow. Running counter to these bands of color, from the bottom right to the top left, is Jesus’ deathly pale body, stretched out across the canvas. The final effect of this is to make an “X” in the painting, a collision of lines at opposite angles that adds intensity to the composition.

Jesus’ head rests in God’s lap, while his legs are supported by the angels. His arms hang limply from his sides, and his legs are curled beneath him. The portrait of God the Father is one of the most convincing images of God I’ve ever seen, perhaps second only to Michelangelo’s renditions. Although His Son lies dead before Him, He is imperturbably calm. He is infinitely powerful, and yet above all of the corruptions that usually taint the heart’s of the powerful here in earth. Perched below Him is a shining white dove, the Holy Ghost, completing the Trinity. To me, this is the height of religious art.

El Greco

Now I get to one of my absolute favorites, El Greco (1541 – 1614). His real name was Domenicos Theotocopoulos, but the Spaniards gave him his nickname (“the Greek”). Born in Crete, El Greco was trained in the Byzantine tradition of icon paintings. Later, he traveled to Venice, eventually working in Titian’s workshop. Unable to find suitable patronage, he later made his way to Spain, settling down in Toledo. According to the Prado Guidebook—and I quite agree—he forms part of the trinity of great Spanish painters, along with Velazquez and Goya.

His style—influenced by both Orthodox and Catholic traditions—is absolutely unique and unmistakable. In fact, his style is so distinct that it makes more sense to talk about his work as a whole rather than individual paintings, which I will now attempt to do.

Although El Greco often dealt with traditional, religious themes, his treatment was far from traditional. The colors are bright and pure. El Greco painted with a severely limited pallet; he wasn’t working with the big, fancy 64-crayon box, but the basic 12-crayon set. These simple colors dominates over everything else—big, brash, bright colors; the paintings would be gaudy if they weren’t so beautiful. The bright reds, greens, yellows, and blues swirl and curl across the canvas, highlighted by the dark grey backgrounds he prefers.

There is a certain cartoonish character to his paintings. By this, I don’t mean that they are silly, but that they are exaggerated. El Greco doesn’t aim for a ‘realistic’, ‘lifelike’ representation; instead, he aims for an expression of passionate emotions. Realism, perspective, orderly composition—all are sacrificed for feeling. His figures are distorted and contorted, with elongated bodies in exaggerated and sometimes unnatural poses. Here the vertical predominates over the diagonal and the horizontal. Everything is stretched, and you can feel your eye being pulled upwards. I cannot help comparing this intense feeling of height with that evoked by the Toledo Cathedral in El Greco’s home town. In both that wonderful cathedral and in El Greco’s paintings, the whole emphasis is upwards, creating an astonishing feeling of smallness and awe.

All of these characteristics are evident in El Greco’s Trinity. This painting was actually based on a print by Dürer—the same print on which Jose de Ribera based his depiction of the Trinity. But even though the inspiration was the same, how different are the results! Ribera’s work, although supernatural in subject matter, is strongly realistic in style, whereas El Greco hardly makes the attempt to be realistic. As I mentioned above, Ribera’s painting is based on diagonal symmetry, whereas El Greco’s work is all vertical. Here, Christ lays lifeless, but His body is still held upright. The angels, too, stand upright, as well as God Himself. El Greco’s color pallet also differs markedly from Ribera’s; the latter uses complex shades and shadowing to achieve the verisimilitude, while the former’s preference for bright colors is apparent. Jesus’ naked flesh is contrasted with the bright blue, red, and green robes of the angels who flank Him. And above these figures is the Holy Ghost, flying triumphant against a shining yellow background. Ribera’s picture, although taking place in an imaginary space, still looks solid and three dimensional, while El Greco’s treatment of space seems almost medieval in his lack of concern with solidity and depth. Two masters; two diametrically opposed artistic visions.

For me, the strongest works of El Greco in the Prado are his Annunciation and Baptism of Christ. These two works were both originally part of an Altarpiece that El Greco designed and which has since been dismantled. The composition and style of both are quite similar: a Biblical scene plays out on the lower half of the canvas, while on the upper half figures float above the action. The feeling of vertigo engendered by these works is especially noticeable in person. I find it’s best to experience El Greco’s paintings while standing quite close, looking up at the top. Seen from this angle, elongated and distorted figures do not look at all ridiculous, but like heaven itself has opened up above you.

I find it especially difficult to articulate exactly why I like El Greco’s work so much. His work is not technically astounding (at least, not in my opinion). They are also not exactly pretty, at least not in the way many landscapes and portraits are pretty. True, there is a certain sweetness and tenderness in El Greco’s faces, such as the face of the Virgin in the Annunciation; but there is no physical beauty, and hardly any individuation. Like in medieval painting, El Greco isn’t trying to capture individual personalities; his paintings are not about people—at least, not primarily—but about the divine.

He is great because his vision is so convincing. One feels that he is trying to communicate his whole worldview to you. The author who I most readily think of for comparison is Dostoyevsky. Both El Greco and Dostoyevsky were unconcerned with realism, naturalism, or conventional elegance, but instead subordinated everything to their profound, religious perspective. Both produced works that would be silly, ugly, or even ridiculous if they were not so powerfully moving. Both were products of their time, and yet looked far beyond their time; both had styles influenced by the fashions of the day, which yet broke every rule of conventional taste. Both were overshadowed during their lifetimes by lesser artists, due to their insistence on expressing their deepest thoughts in a style unique to themselves. El Greco, like Dostoyevsky, defines what it means to be a true artist.

Goya

We now move on to the third part of the Trinity—Goya.

Francisco Goya (1746 – 1828) was actually alive when the Prado was opened. Though born into a poor family, he eventually rose to be the most famous painter in Spain. Now he is recognized as one of the most influential and important painters of his century—indeed, of all time. The Prado has an enormous collection of Goya’s works. According to the guidebook, there are almost 150 paintings of his. Like Velazquez, Goya was extraordinarily versatile; he painted portraits, country scenes, landscapes, mythological scenes, religious works, and still lifes. But Goya was also an artist of enormous depth, creating many works of astonishing emotional force.

Because he was so versatile, it’s difficult to discuss his work as a whole. But there are some things I notice. First, he had a preference for dark colors; many of his paintings are set in a kind of gloomy twilight, even if they are outside. Second, to my eye Goya’s figures are unnaturally short and stocky; and I find that Goya’s faces have a kind of ape-like quality, with a small forehead, a small nose, and big eyes. In some paintings, this effect is subtle, but in others it is quite apparent. Many of Goya’s best paintings are depictions of violence, terror, desperation, and pain. Like Kafka, Goya had a way of portraying the terrors of life so forcefully that even us moderns, constantly barraged with violent imagery, are still shocked and horrified by what we find.

Although there are several fine portraits by Goya in the Prado—as well as one famous nude drawing of a woman, which was quite scandalous at the time—what most appeals to me is his darker side. This is exemplified in two of his most famous paintings, The Second of May and The Third of May, 1808. These depict the Napoleonic occupation of Madrid, and the short-lived Spanish resistance to the French soldiers. They are both enormous paintings, about twice the size of an average man. They hang side by side in the lower floor of the Prado, a panorama of war.

The first painting, The Second of May, 1808, depicts the fighting itself. The scene is set in the Puerta del Sol, where Spanish citizens are attacking the French troops. Some of these French soldiers are Mamelukes on horseback, who Napoleon picked up in Egypt. According to the audioguide, the sight of Arab troops in Madrid was an especially troubling sight for the Spaniards, since they had fought so hard to push the Muslims out of their continent.

Be that as it may, Goya’s treatment can hardly be called propagandistic. There are no heroes or villains in this painting; rather, everyone—Spanish, Egyptian, or French—is reduced to animal desperation. There is nothing glorious to be found; there is only despair and death. Compare one of the figures in the foreground, a Spaniard. He is dressed in dark clothes; in his right hand a dagger is held aloft. Below him, hanging off a horse, is a dead Mameluke with blood dripping down his body. Even so, the Spaniard, with inhuman eyes filled with a mixture of fear and hatred, prepares to stab down once more at the dead soldier. Above him is his counterpart on the French side, a Mameluke seated on a horse. He also has a knife grasped in his right hand, prepared to stab down; his eyes also are filled with that mixture of fear and hatred that animates the Spaniard. These two foes are equals in this battle—neither is ideologically, morally, or culturally superior. They are men turned to beasts through violence. Around these two figures, everyone else is nearly faceless; their eyes and mouths are mere blurs in the confusion.

The second painting, The Third of May, 1808, depicts the ruthless execution by the French of the prisoners taken during the uprising. The scene is now the hill of Principe Pio. On the right of the painting, a faceless line of French soldiers are hunched over their rifles, prepared to fire. Here the soldiers are neither men nor beasts, but mere machines of destruction. On the left are a group of cowering men, about to be killed. The most arresting figure is, of course, the man in the very center. While everyone around him is dressed in dark colors, this man wears a white shirt and yellow pants. He alone doesn’t cower; he looks right at the firing squad. His arms are raised high in the air—but why? Is he begging for mercy? No, it’s something more. That man’s gesture express Goya’s own feelings at the senseless destruction of war. It is a horrified, despairing plea for it all to stop; for the soldiers to cease seeing each other are enemies, and to start seeing their enemies as humans.

But these two paintings, as violent as they are, seem almost tame in comparison with Goya’s Black Paintings. Here is where Goya most nearly approaches Kafka. These paintings were originally painted by Goya for himself, late in his life, while he was living in a house outside Madrid called La Quinta del Sordo (The House of the Deaf Man). They are enigmatic, mysterious, and terrifying works. Their name comes from their dark color, which Goya achieved by mixing printer’s ink in with his oil paints.

The most inscrutable of these paintings is what’s called the Half-Submerged Dog. A dog’s head emerges from behind something—a dark brown area at the bottom of the painting. But what going on? Is the dog swimming? Above, the canvas is absolutely featureless, just a dark, textured yellow. The viewers eye is attracted to the dog’s expression; he is staring up into the yellow space above, and looks frightened to me. But it is really impossible to guess what Goya was trying to depict here. The final impression is one of devastating emptiness and confusion.

The rest of the paintings are hardly easier to interpret. Two giant men stand in a countryside, cudgeling one another. A goat-like shaman sits surrounded by monkeyish peasants. An old man eats soup, while a cadaverous figure points a bony finger.

But the most absolutely disturbing of these paintings is Saturn Devouring his Son. The subject is the old Greek legend. Saturn was told that one of his children would overthrow him, so he gamely decided to eat them all as soon as they were born. Goya takes this story and turns it into a nightmare. Saturn is not godlike, not even human. He kneels in a dark space, his naked body covered in shadow. He stares at the viewer with wide eyes as he takes another bite of the already decapitated, bleeding figure clutched in his hands. There is no question why he is doing this: fear. You can see in his eyes, he is terrified. This must be one of the most penetrating analyses of power I know. This titan, ruler of the universe, is forced to eat his own children to maintain his control. Absolute power has not only corrupted him, but it has destroyed him. There is nothing left in him but desperation.

Only the Beginning

I have spent days writing this post, and have only scratched the surface of the treasures you can find in the Prado. I need to stop before I get any further carried away in my descriptions. But know that these paintings I have described, though I think they are some of the best in the museum, are not a fair representation of all that the Prado contains. There are works by Titian, Tintoretto, Roger van der Weyden, Rubens, Dürer, Raphael, Caravaggio, Corregio, and Fra Angelico. Added to this are innumerable works by minor masters, filling every room with beauty.

If you visit Madrid, do take the time to go to the Prado. It’s a magnificent place.

 

 

A Day in Segovia

A Day in Segovia

 

A few weeks before moving to Madrid, I was sitting at the dining-room table while my brother showed me pictures from his high school trip to Spain.

The old digital camera made a beep every time he scrolled to the next photo—a tired and rather unenthusiastic beep. The screen, moreover, was exceedingly tiny, even compared to the one on my smart-phone. It is amazing to think that there was a time, not too long ago, when digital cameras like this one were cutting-edge; and now they seem like artifacts from another epoch.

“This was cool,” my brother said, pointing to a microscopic image.

I leaned in and squinted my eyes. With a suppressed gasp, I recognized a towering Roman Aqueduct.

“Wow, where’s that?” I asked.

“Segovia.”

§

Several weeks, a plane ride, and a train ride later, my girlfriend and I were standing on a line for the bus to Segovia. We’d just taken the train from Madrid; and, owing to our full bladders, we had missed the first bus from the train station by going immediately to the bathroom upon our arrival; so we had to wait on line for another one to arrive.

“When’s the next bus coming?” I asked, petulantly.

“According to the schedule, not for another thirty minutes.”

“What? So what are we going to do?”

“I dunno.”

I looked around at the landscape beyond. I’d heard that Segovia is a bit like The Lord of the Rings (El Señor de Los Anillos); and indeed it was. Fields of dry grass stretched out in all directions, leading to the gently sloping peaks of the sierra on the horizon. Armies of orcs and elves marched through the countryside of my imagination as I waited, bored and sullen, for the bus to arrive.

“Let’s just walk,” I said, after five minutes.

“No.”

“C’mon,” I said. “It’s only about an hour. I’m tired of waiting here.”

“We’re not walking.”

I began to mope again.

A group of five American girls was standing in front of us, each of them wearing a floral dress and a black leather jacket; did they coordinate? I looked back at the station building, then at an advertisement on a billboard, then at the line in front of me, and then out at the scenery.

“C’mon!” I said again. “I wanna walk. This sucks.”

“There is no chance I’m walking,” my girlfriend said. “Just wait.”

“This is a waste of time!” I whined. “We might as well just go back to Madrid.”

The sun beat down upon my back, the wind occasionally whipped up in a gust, and still the bus didn’t come. The man in front of me shifted his weight from one leg to another, the couple behind us had a subdued conversation, and still the bus didn’t come. No, the bus didn’t come when I looked to the left or the right, nor when I frowned or pouted.

And then it did. A blue blip appeared on the road far away, and was gradually magnified into a full-sized city bus. The bus pulled up to the line, and then the driver promptly got out of the vehicle and popped inside the station building. He was taking a break.

This is actually one of the most jarring differences between Spain and New York. The bus drivers in NYC are more or less chained to their seats. The very suggestion that they would get out of their vehicle is preposterous. Here, the buses are driven by people, and sometimes they take breaks. It’s hard to get used to.

In five minutes, however, we were standing on the bus, speeding towards Segovia. I’m glad we didn’t walk.

§

We were delivered right into the center of Segovia. I looked up and blinked into the cloudless sunny sky. Towering over me was a Roman aqueduct.

It was magnificent. Right before my very eyes were two rows, one atop the other, of the famous Roman arches. After all these years, the thing still conveyed a sense of the awe and splendor of the imperial power. What must the local inhabitants of Segovia have thought when these invaders erected this massive structure? What could have prepared them for this feat of engineering, a pathway on stilts to carry water from miles away to the heart of their city?

Even to this denizen of the twenty-first century, the aqueduct is breathtaking. It is so narrow compared to its height that it looks like a strong gust of wind could knock it down. But of course, the wind has puffing away at it for a few centuries now, all to no effect. It has been built with such tremendous skill that it has outlived even the immortal empire that erected it.

When I imagine a gang of ancient Romans, without calculators, without spreadsheet software, without cranes, steel support beams, retractable tape-measures, reflective vests, or hard-hats, pulling up stone after stone with pulleys and hand-twisted rope, writing down their designs on papyrus scrolls (or whatever they used), mixing their Roman cement by hand in giant vats, strong-arming these heavy stones into place, I am simply beyond astonishment at what they accomplished. Really, I haven’t the slightest idea how they did what they did; I have trouble even assembling the furniture from IKEA.

Faced with something like this, there’s not much a tourist can do. You take a photo from one angle, take a photo from another angle; then stop, gape, and stare. You climb some stairs to take another photo; you take a photo with the town in the background, with the sky in the background, with yourself in the foreground; then stop, gape, stare, repeat. It is terribly frustrating, really, because you know that no amount of photos could possibly do justice to the thing sitting before your eyes. Not even your eyes can do justice to it.

But we couldn’t spend all day just staring at it; we had only a few hours, and more sites to see. Our next stop was the Segovia Cathedral.

Compared to other cathedrals I’ve seen, the Segovia Cathedral struck me as more feminine. I hope this adjective does not ring of sexism, for it is not only me who uses it; among the Spaniards, the cathedral is known as la Dama de las Catedrales (“the Lady of the Cathedrals”), partly because of its small size, and partly because of its elegant and curved exterior. Compared with, say, the Toledo Cathedral, the cathedral of Segovia seems rather subdued; the bright tan color is more welcoming than the harsh gray of Toledo; and absent are the statues which seem to burst from every corner of its more southerly cousin.

There was no line, and not even an entrance fee, so we walked right in. The interior was just as welcoming as its exterior. The whole space was wonderfully bright, owing to the many windows on each level of the cathedral. Indeed, there was nothing “gothic” about this gothic cathedral; the design seemed rather joyful and playful. But pleasant as the place was, it did not powerfully capture my attention like other cathedrals have; and thus in thirty minutes, we were walking outside, heading to our next location.

This was the Alcázar of Segovia. As I’ve mentioned in another post, the word “alcazar” comes from the Arabic word for “castle”; thus the word is now used in Spain for castles or forts left behind by the Moors. The three most famous of these, I believe, are in Córdoba, Sevilla, and Segovia. Having visited all three, I can tell you that each one is a stunning work of architecture.

The Alcázar of Segovia is the most dramatic of the group. Built on a large rock overlooking the surrounding area, the castle can only be approached from one direction—that is, unless one is prepared to climb straight up a few hundred feet of rock. In short, it is a perfect spot for a defensive structure, which is why the site has been used for fortifications since Roman times.

A solid wall of stone greets the visitor (or would-be conqueror) as the structure is approached, a towering tan bulwark which seems to beat its chest at you, daring you to attack. Separating the castle from the approaching walkway is a deep moat, which, interestingly enough, was carved into the rock by fitting logs into grooves in the stone and pouring water onto the logs, causing them to swell and break the rock. Thus, with the drawbridge pulled up, the place would be nearly impregnable. Or at least, short of simply blasting it to smithereens, I have no idea how one would go about invading the thing. And indeed, according to the audioguide the place was never successfully taken (though I’m not sure how many attempts were made to do so).

The inside were perhaps less impressive than the outside. A fire had badly damaged the interior of the castle in the 19th century, and it has since been only partially restored. Nonetheless, it was an agreeable experience to walk around the place. Empty suits of armor (which looked like replicas), greeted us as we walked in, and old pieces of fancy furniture—thrones and chairs and beds—were available for our viewing pleasure. Ornate tapestries hung from the ceilings; stained-glass windows adorned the outside walls; and royal portraits and religious paintings decorated every room. More interesting, perhaps, was the Hall of Kings, a room wherein a band of miniature sculptures of every Spanish monarch—stretching back to Pelagius, the 8th century Visigothic king—wrapped around the top of the room, each of them sitting on a golden throne, all seeming to be part of some otherworldly general council.

But the highlight of the tour was the tower. To get up to the top, one had to climb perhaps one-hundred stairs up a twisting spiral staircase, occasionally pressing oneself against the wall to allow people to pass by on their way down. It’s an exhausting, claustrophobic, and slightly harrowing experience, as it would be so easy to slip and tumble down all one-hundred steep stone steps and break your neck. But we paid extra to see the tower, and by Joe we were going to see it.

If you are like me, you will be panting, sweaty, and have aching knees by the time you reach the top; but the view is worth it. Or, at least, this is what I told myself as I leaned against the wall, panting, snapping a few photos of the town and countryside beyond. But I’m afraid my peace of mind was disturbed by the knowledge that I would soon have to descend those same steps that led me up here, which did not put me in the mood to wax poetic about the distant hills, the rolling plains, the rivers and trees far below, the bright sunny sky above, and the town of Segovia stretched out before me. No, I was not feeling terribly appreciative at that moment; in fact, I was feeling somewhat peckish. But it was a bit like The Lord of the Rings.

§

Before our trip, a kind Spanish teacher from Segovia gave us some tips. She mentioned all the usual sites, which didn’t seem to excite her a whole lot; but she very much perked up when she began recommending food.

We thus arrived in Segovia with a list of foods to eat and restaurants to eat them in. And it wasn’t long after leaving the Alcázar that we had been seated in one of these restaurants, and were going through our list.

The first dish was judiones. This is a bean stew made with giant beans (judiones de La Granja, or “beans from La Granja”), chorizo, bacon, pork, onions, and of course plenty of salt. It’s a rich and hearty appetizer, perfect for cold weather. But what I was really excited for was the cochinillo asado, or Spanish roast suckling pig. This is the most well-known dish of Segovia, and deservedly so. It is exceedingly simple, but exceedingly delicious. The skin is crispy and buttery, while the inside is rich, tender, and succulent. To finish, for desert we had ponche Segoviano, which is a sort of simple cake with a creamy sauce; it was milky, sweet, and scrumptious.

In fact, I think that the meal was the best I’ve had in all of Spain so far—and that’s saying something. We emerged from the restaurant too full to walk; we could only waddle our way back to the bus, taking sundry wrong turns along the way. We had a train to catch, and not enough confidence in our own ability to figure out the buses to wait any longer. This turned out to be a good thing, as we spent about five minutes waiting at the wrong stop. Really, there’s nothing like foreign travel to make you feel absolutely clueless and lost.

But we were not lost; soon we were riding the bus to the train, and then the train to Madrid. This was, by the way, the first high-speed train I’d even ridden on, and I must say that it’s extremely impressive how the train is able to reach such tremendous speeds without passengers feeling so much as a bump. We seemed, rather, to hover through the landscape; or perhaps the landscape hovered past us, whizzing by in a great green blur.

I was luckily sitting on the westward facing side of the train, and thus could see the sun setting on the horizon. It was terrific; the distance was lit up in vivid shades of red and orange, while the sky above turned a purplish blue. It reminded me of the sunset I had seen on the plane ride over; the ground was so flat that it could have been a sea of clouds or a rolling ocean.

I wanted to show my girlfriend, but she was fast asleep. So I pressed my cheek against the cold glass, and watched the sun slowly dip below the horizon, the color draining out of the sky until the world was shrouded in the deep blue of night.

A Trip to Toledo

A Trip to Toledo

 

“Where’s the damned gate?” I asked my friend, as we stood in the train station, bewildered, worried, looking at every sign, nervously checking the time as the appointed hour of our departure neared.

I thought it must be upstairs, since that’s where the arrow seemed to point; but my friend, more perceptive than myself, noticed that the sign said bajo on it.

“That means it’s on the ground floor,” she said.

She pointed this out while we were already on the escalator up; so after we lamely rode all the way up, and then the adjacent one all the way down, we began again to scour the ground floor for our gate.

“Maybe it’s this way?” my friend offered, pointing in the direction that most people were walking.

We joined the crowd, and found ourselves headed towards the door outside.

“No, no,” I said. “This is to exit the building.”

We returned to where we started, once more examining the sign with the ambiguous arrow. Time was running out. We’d given ourselves a good 45 minutes to get lost, and we’d used nearly all of them. Luckily, we soon noticed the (very obvious) gate entrance, where people were lining up to pass through security.

After walking through the metal detector, we walked frantically down the platform, passing car after car of the train, looking in the windows for open seats. Finally, we got to a car that was mostly empty; we hopped on, found the two nearest seats, and sat down—happy that the stress of the morning was over.

Our peace was disturbed when, just two minutes later, two very nice Spanish women politely informed us that we were sitting in their seats.

“Perdone,” I said, as we got up, again confused and embarrassed, and walked away.

“I told you we shouldn’t have sat there,” I said as we recommenced our desperate search for seats. (I’d said no such thing, by the way.) “That must’ve been the reserved section!”

“Whatever.”

We went through one, then two, then three cars—all of them completely full—until finally, in an otherwise full car, there were two empty seats.

We sat down again, hoping that finally we could relax.

As I sat there, letting my breathing slow, still a bit disoriented from the activity and lack of sleep, I noticed that an elderly British couple was sitting in front of us. This would not be worth mentioning if, a moment later, a Spanish man hadn’t came up and told them that they were sitting in his seat.

“What?” said the Englishman.

“Yes, look,” the Spaniard said in English, holding up his ticket. With his finger, he pointed to two numbers on the top of the slip of paper.

“E6 and E7, car 3,” he said.

I looked up and found, to my surprise, that the seats had numbers and letters. We had assigned seats!

“Oh, terribly sorry,” the Englishman said, as he and his wife relocated to their proper seats—which, as it turned out, were right behind us.

“Quick,” I said to my friend, “the tickets!”

She pulled out the tickets from her bag, and we hastily examined them. E8 and E9, car 3. I looked up: we were sitting in our exact seats.

One thing to remember when traveling in foreign lands: even simple things can be a challenge, since here your conventional wisdom is unconventional, and your common sense far from common. This can make you come across as a fool, and feel like one, too. But you know you’re not a fool—you’re an American. And although there’s a large degree of overlap in the two categories, they aren’t exactly equal.

§

I had been urged, repeatedly and sometimes urgently, by friends and family who had been to Madrid that, once there, I shouldn’t miss a chance to visit Toledo.

Toledo is a small city, situated about 75 kilometers south of Madrid. It can be gotten to cheaply and quickly, by train in 30 minutes and by bus in an hour, making it the ideal place for day-trippers. It is a city of long history and rich culture, of fine architecture and splendid sights.

But of course I didn’t know any of this when, after much cursing and petty frustration, I booked two round-trip tickets (ida y vuelta) on the train for a Sunday trip. Really, I didn’t know anything about the place at all, other than that its cathedral was reputed to be one of the finest gothic cathedrals in Europe.

As a result, I had nothing definite in mind when I stepped off the train in Toledo, blinking in the bright sun, looking around in a befuddled daze. My ignorance didn’t bother me, however, as going places without knowing anything about them is something I tend to do. After all, I’d moved to Spain without knowing Spanish—or really anything about Spain at all except that there was bullfighting, flamenco, and an inquisition a long time ago—so why not try the same approach with Toledo?

My friend was less keen on this, though, so she went about procuring a map from the nearby tourist office—even as I insisted that it was unnecessary, since we have phones.

Yet we needed neither a map nor a phone to tell us that we’d arrived somewhere special; even the train station was lovely. In fact, it hardly seemed like a train station at all—more like a renovated relic. I know now, since I’ve looked it up, that the building was constructed in the early 20th century, and so was far from ancient. Nevertheless, the amount of effort exerted on a purely functional edifice—elaborately ornamented on the inside and outside, with finely carved wooden railings and stained-glass windows—was enough to convince me that Toledo was not an ordinary city.

Since we were traveling on the cheap, we decided not to take a cab or a bus into town, but to walk. This was, it turned out, an excellent choice, not only because of the agreeable weather, but because the approach from the station to the town took us across a bridge, spanning across a sparkling blue river, and allowed us to see the whole antique city, nestled up on a hilltop, almost as a traveler would have seen it a few hundred years ago.

I admit I indulged in a bit of romanticizing in the last paragraph; for it is impossible to forget that, however old Toledo might be, it is now the twenty-first century. Indeed, the juxtaposition between old and new was a constant refrain during our trip there. City buses crawled up twisting roads, alongside fortified walls; modern cars squeezed their way through crooked, narrow streets, forcing pedestrians to press themselves up against the sides of buildings, as if in a police line-up, to avoid getting clipped by passing side-mirrors.

To an American, at least, and I suspect to most other people, the past has a strange and eerie power, which lingers in the present like a faint, musty odor. The whole city felt old. We went through a stone gate, passing churches and abbeys, climbing up a road that had possibly been laid down before my country was a country—perhaps before my country was even a colony.

In these moments, when in the presence of something truly antique, there is a certain type of pensiveness that comes upon us, a certain reverie which, we hope, is akin to wisdom. Being in the presence of an object so much older than ourselves puts our own lives into a historic perspective. We feel ourselves, all too briefly, to be but a small and passing phenomenon in the pageant of works and deeds that came before us and will continue after us. Our problems, struggles, and triumphs are made ridiculous in the face of these accomplishments, and we are humbled.

If there is something edifying or character-building about visiting historic sites, I suspect that the above is it. The problem, however, is that these contemplative moments—when the passing years yawn open in your mind like a chasm, swallowing you up until nothing remains but mute astonishment—are cut short by all the other people there, trying to do the exact same thing.

It is one of the paradoxes of travel that, because it’s supposed to be good for you, everyone does it; and because everyone does it, it ceases to be good for you. Nothing quite ruins the romance of gazing at an old statue like two people in front of it, taking a selfie. And not only does this ruin the romance, but it makes it hard to even get a good selfie yourself.

§

The first thing I wanted to do was to visit the cathedral—since that was the only thing I knew about, anyway. I typed “Toledo Cathedral” into my phone, and was helpfully shown the way with a blue path extending from the tips of my toes to one of the finest gothic cathedrals in Europe. Still, we managed to take a few wrong turns (I’m not sure mapping software was built for the crooked, tightly packed, criss-crossing roads of old towns like Toledo), and, as usual, I managed to leave my friend behind a few times as I ruthlessly powerwalked in whatever direction I thought was correct.

But gothic cathedrals are notoriously hard to miss; so in just twenty-minutes time, we found ourselves gaping upward at the magnificent Catedral Primada María de Toledo. It was even more marvelous than I’d expected. It was, in fact, probably the most beautiful structure that I’d ever seen. Most conspicuous was the tremendous spire, ornamented with spikes, reaching upward like a hand grasping towards heaven.

Hypnotized, we made our way towards it (though we took a short detour to examine the metal swords on sale in a gift shop), trying to find the entrance. Our search took us past the three great doors. In typical gothic style, these were surrounded by concentric archways, which had the effect of making them seem like portals to another world.

Every corner of the façade was stuffed with bas-reliefs of religious figures; the whole building, in fact, was covered in little statues, who prayed and chanted and sang endlessly to the heavens and to the earth. The entire Judeo-Christian tradition was there, the prophets, the apostles, angels and psalmists and kings and priests and even God.

It was a very strange feeling, standing there in front of those doors; it was as if the entire cathedral was looking down at us, judging our little lives. Perhaps because there were so many human figures carved into the walls, or perhaps because the whole building, both in its large-scale design and its fine details, was redolent with symbols and tradition—for whatever reason, the cathedral did not seem in that moment to be a mere hunk of stone, but strangely alive.

But of course, I couldn’t let this feeling linger long, for I had to take pictures. This done, we kept moving, slowly circling the entire edifice, until we ended up at the tourist entrance. Strange: there was no line; only a couple employees standing in front of the open door.

“Ask him if this is for the cathedral,” I told my friend.

“¿Por el catedral?” she asked.

“Sí, pero se abre a las dos,” he responded.

“It opens at two,” my friend told me.

“Damn.”

Somewhat despondently, we pulled out the tourist map (the damn thing was useful, after all) and began looking for other things to do until then. The nearest attraction was the El Greco museum, so we decided on that.

§

Like most everything I encountered here, I knew almost nothing about El Greco before coming to Spain. I’d seen a few of his paintings in an art history textbook, and remembered liking them—but that’s about it. So I was understandably not very excited for the museum.

But I perked up a bit when the lady at the front desk told us it was free.

“Sweet!” I said, and in a few minutes we found ourselves standing in an old house, refurnished to give it the appearance it would’ve had during El Greco’s life.

“Imagine, El Greco, the famous painter, lived here!” I said to myself, looking around the quaint old place.

Unfortunately, I soon found out from reading a sign on the wall that he’d never lived here; in fact, his old house no longer exists. This museum was bought and built by some eccentric nobleman (if memory serves) under false pretenses, and the true state of affairs was discovered later.

Somehow, learning this made the experience considerably less cool. I’m not exactly sure why this is, mind you. Really, when you think it over, it’s hard to resist the conclusion that the tourist’s search for the authentic is a bit silly.

The simple truth is that “authenticity” is not a property of objects, but of our perception of objects. Take these two scenarios: First, what if the sign told me that this was the real house, when it really wasn’t? And second, what if the sign told me that this wasn’t the real house, when it really was?

In the first scenario, I’d be thrilled; and in the second scenario, I’d be disappointed—even though the physical house would be, in both cases, identical. The simple fact is that I have no direct way of telling whether this or that particular house was the previous home to a famous Spanish Renaissance painter. My feelings of awe or anticlimax are thus pure exercises of my imagination; they are only tenuously related with the physical object. If told the house was real, I could imagine the painter himself (not that I know what he looked like) walking through these very halls; while if told the house was only a replica, these pleasant images wouldn’t spring so easily to mind. But of course, I can imagine El Greco wherever and whenever I want. And if I was a master of self-deception, maybe I could even convince myself that he’d lived in my own apartment?

To return to the museum, I wasn’t very impressed with it. Seeing old-fashioned furniture and old-fangled kitchens does not play strongly upon my passions. So I walked from room to room, my eyes passing over every surface, my mind somewhere else, until I found myself in a room filled with El Greco’s works.

My interest was piqued. Most of the paintings were individualized portraits of saints. One detail I remember in particular, which I learned from reading a caption, is that it’s a tradition in Catholic art to portray martyred saints holding the instrument with which they were killed. Thus, there were a few portraits of saints with crucifixes leaned upon them, staring straight into the viewer’s eyes, as if challenging us to equal their conviction.

But the most arresting painting of the lot was the portrait of St. Peter, teary-eyed, his hands clasped in prayer in front of his chest, beseeching heaven for forgiveness. He had just denied Christ (as in, denied he knew Christ) three times, just as Jesus prophesied, and was repenting for his cowardice.

It’s difficult to capture the feeling of standing before a great painting—especially for someone such as myself, who knows so little about art. But what I remember most are St. Peter’s eyes, sad and soft, seeming to twinkle as you looked at the portrait.

This was near the end of our walk through the museum; and soon we found ourselves, once again, standing on the streets, wondering what to do. Thankfully, it was almost two o’clock; so after eating a brief lunch—and a very early lunch, for Spaniards—we were on our way, once again, to visit one of the finest gothic cathedrals in Europe.

§

The line was short, the wait was brief, the price of admission came with an audioguide; and in just a few minutes, we found ourselves standing under the vaulted ceiling of Toledo Cathedral.

The first thing I noticed upon entering was the smell. It was a scent I had experienced at least once before, at a concert in a church in New York. Perhaps this is a scent associated with all catholic places of worship—I don’t know. What I do know is that, whatever the smell is, I love it. I find it intoxicating and irresistible. I know this sounds funny, but I wish my whole life smelled like this, for there is something unearthly and calming about it, as if this faint fragrance is above all of the petty concerns and vain ambitions, all of the weaknesses and frailties that beset human life. It is a smell that puts the whole cosmos in perspective. I’d buy it if I knew where to find it.

The next feeling is a vertiginous sense of height. The ceiling, made entirely of heavy stone, hovers high up above you, suspended in mid-air. Light pours in through stained-glass windows, dozens of feet up, making the top of the cathedral brighter than the bottom; it is as if heaven itself is illuminating the space. At ground level, meanwhile, the place is dusky and dim—a twilight of religious mystery. The building is just as impressive on the ears as on the eyes. Footsteps, snatches of conversation, coughs, sneezes, and whispers are all quickly picked up by the towering room, carried up to the top of the building, bounced off the walls, and returned to you as indistinct murmuring. Even your own breath seems far away.

I put on the audioguide and began the virtual tour. I’ve quickly developed a strong liking for audioguides. They are private—preserving the individual experience, and giving you the freedom to go where you please—but they also connect you intimately with your surroundings. Left to my own devices, a particular religious work of art, for example, might be wholly unintelligible; but with an expert in my ear, guiding my eye, feeding me information, a meaningless image becomes an icon, laden with symbolism. This way, I was led by my ears all through the cathedral, then into its museum, then outside into the cloister, and then back in again, learning about kings, cardinals, saints, and artists.

Perhaps this is only a modern prejudice, but I am normally tempted to say that art is a form of self-expression. Yet this definition is wholly inadequate when faced with something like the Toledo Cathedral. So many hands contributed to this building, across so many years, in so many different styles, that it’s obvious that the building is not the expression of any individual. Rather, the building seems to be the expression of an age, of a religion, of a whole people. It is a blend of sensibilities across centuries.

I can’t hope to recount all the different tombs and temples contained in that church; and besides, such a straightforward list would be dull. I will try, however, to articulate why I found my time in the cathedral so profoundly moving, even though I am not at all religious.

But what does it mean to be religious? Does it mean to believe certain dogmas and to endorse a particular mythology? A single glance at the cathedral would give you this impression. Every spare surface has been ornamented with an image from the Judeo-Christian saga. During the Middle Ages, I can imagine these pictures and sculptures being a visual Bible for the unlettered farmers who prayed here, inculcating the faith through the sight rather than words.

“Faith” and “belief” are words we often hear associated with religion. Although some church fathers, such as St. Thomas Aquinas, attempted to persuade others with reason, in the church’s history tremendous clashes of power and violence were waged over doctrinal differences. Arianism, the belief that Jesus was distinct and subordinate to God the Father, came very close to being made the orthodox belief, until it was slowly beaten back by its opponents; and a war had to be waged during the Middle Ages, the Albigensian Crusade, to wipe out a puritanical sect of Christians who had adopted a dualist view of the cosmos (i.e. holding that there was both an evil and a good force in the universe). I give these two examples only to show that, in the history of religion, or at least of Catholicism, a lot of ink and blood has been spilled to establish one belief over another.

Insofar as religion consists in holding beliefs in the supernatural, I can’t abide by it. It seems to me a violence to human reason to enforce beliefs based neither on evidence nor logic. But once the pretentions to reality of Catholic dogma are pared away, once we discredit and ignore the occult elements, what are we left with?

What remains is a complex medley of stories and rituals, myths and legends, customs and ceremonies. Without the core of belief, this remnant can perhaps be called the “shell” of the religion. For Catholicism, this shell is partly physical, partly immaterial. The intangible portion of the remainder consists of the wonderful stories—Adam and Eve, David and Samuel, Jesus and the apostles—full of drama and wit and wisdom. The material remainder consists of things like the Book of Kells, the Hagia Sophia, and of course the Toledo Cathedral.

Taken together, I’d argue that the remaining shell of the religion can be seen, not simply as an anthropological curiosity, but a tremendous work of art. The Catholic religion is like a beautiful, multi-colored tapestry, spread over the whole of human life. Or perhaps it can be better described as an aesthetic system, through which the mundane events of daily life are dramatized. The beauty often hidden in our humdrum affairs is accentuated and given meaning within this tradition. Like a painter, the myths and rituals of religion begin with something ordinary—a shopkeeper, a sunny evening in the park, a few objects sitting on a table—and transforms them into something beautiful and significant.

Of course, I can’t claim any originality for this thought; many have said this before. The Spanish American philosopher, George Santayana, is my most direct influence in seeing religion this way. Here is a quote from his book, The Life of Reason: “Mythical thinking has its roots in reality, but, like a plant, touches the ground only at one end. It stands unmoved and flowers wantonly into the air, transmuting into unexpected and richer forms the substances it sucks from the soil.”

This is an image which has stuck with me: a flower taking nutrients from the unremarkable and ugly dirt, and turning them into a blossom of color. And is not something similar happening when, as in Catholicism, every day of the calendar year commemorates the life of a saint, whose heroic deeds are recounted in dramatic stories? Is not something similar happening when every stage of life and death is marked by a sacrament and a ritual?

These meditations filled my head as I wandered through Toledo Cathedral, gasping up at the ceiling, staring in continuous awe at the many paintings and statues and frescoes contained therein. It was an experience which, I predict, I’ll remember all my life.

§

The rest of my time in Toledo was, of course, something of an anticlimax compared to this. We visited a synagogue, used by the Sephardic Jews before they were expelled in 1492 by the Catholic monarchs. But the main impression left on me by that museum was that I would do well to read The Ornament of the World, by María Rosa Menocal, which tells the story of the brief period of mutual tolerance between Muslims, Jews, and Christians in medieval Spain.

We also visited a temporary exhibition on torture devices, which consisted of replicas of torture devices, alongside gory descriptions of how they were used on their poor victims. The information was framed in the context of the Spanish Inquisition, when torture was used to extract confessions from accused heretics. However, I now suspect that the information presented was untrustworthy, or at least greatly exaggerated. For example, the exhibition had an iron maiden, but according to the Wikipedia article—which I trust!—there is no reliable evidence of the existence of iron maidens before 1793; and although several iron maidens are on display around the world, its unlikely that any of them were ever used. It seems to be an invention of our morbid modern imagination, rather than a condemnation of medieval times.

After this, we tried to visit the Hospital de Tavera, a medical center constructed during the Renaissance. But, unfortunately for us, the place was closed by the time we got there. Oh well.

We were out of time. The train was leaving in 25 minutes, and the station was 20 minutes away. So we powerwalked and jogged the kilometer between the town and the train station, quickly passing through the beautiful station building, presented our tickets, and boarded the train—this time, making sure to sit down in our proper seats. My friend fell asleep shortly after sitting down, and I almost did the same; in thirty minutes, we were exiting the gate which had so eluded us that morning.

“Whew, that was fun,” said my friend. “What’s next?”