Toledo runs into three towers of its Caliphal wall

In the second decade of the 10th century, the center of the peninsula was a continuous struggle between Christians and Muslims, but also between the different taifa that fought against the Umayyad power, the one represented by Abderramán III (891-961), the great emir who built Medina Azahara, in Córdoba.

So this red-haired caliph attacked the always rebellious Toledo, took her and surrounded her with defenses and ramparts to avoid losing her in a revolt.

Now, during emergency works that the Ministry of Culture and Sports has carried out to consolidate a section of the medieval canvases that surround the historic city, it has discovered three towers and an Islamic wall base, about 30 meters long, which remained hidden. .

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The walls of Toledo that are enjoyed today are an authentic puzzle built by history, in which elements of all the cultures that have passed through the imperial city (Romans, Goths, Muslims and Christians) intermingle.

In fact, the monument has, in good condition, towers, gates, corachas, bridges and fortified redoubts, but always starting from the Hispano-Arab route that surrounded the citadel, the medina and the initial Muslim suburbs.

It is built mainly with granite ashlars, many of them taken from Roman or Visigoth constructions.

The General Directorate of Fine Arts has been carrying out consolidation work since last November, which is budgeted at 237,000 euros.

The ministry recognizes that the works are still to be finished, but it can already confirm the discovery of "three new towers and a stretch of canvas, which belong to the works of Caliph Abderramán III in the first third of the 10th century."

The rigging used - large ashlars - showed the power of the emir-caliph through these forms of ashlar building.

Ashlars of the Muslim towers of the wall of ToledoMinistry of Culture and Sports

The rehabilitation works were undertaken urgently because last October the fire service of this World Heritage city detected that parts of the canvas parallel to the Calle de los Cabestreros was in an “extremely precarious situation with risk of collapse towards the highway. bypass that surrounds it ”.

It was in 1085 when the King of Castile Alfonso VI conquered the city, raised his own wall over the Muslim one and endowed it with beautiful entrances, such as the Puerta Antigua de Brisaga.

More or less the one that surprised visitors now admire, although the hidden Caliphal wall on which the Christian sits has claimed its moment of glory after a call to the fire brigade.