otesque--confusion of all those art
waves which flooded Spain. In this respect Toledo is unique in Spain,
unique in the world. Can we wonder at her being called a museum?

The Alcazar, which overlooks the rushing Tago, is a symbol of Toledo's
past. It was successively burnt and rebuilt; its four facades, here
stern and forbidding, there grotesque and worthless, differ from each
other as much as the centuries in which they were built. The eastern
facade dates from the eleventh, the western from the fifteenth, and the
other two from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

But other arts than those purely architectural are richly represented in
Toledo. For Spain's capital in the days following upon the fall of
Granada was a centre of industrial arts, where both foreign and national
workmen, heathen, Jews, and Christians mixed, wrought such wonders as
have forced their way into museums the world over; besides, Tolesian
sculptors are among Spain's most famous.

As regards painting, one artist's life is wrapped up in that of the
wonderful city on the Tago; many of his masterworks are to be seen in
Toledo's churches and in the provincial museum. I refer to Domenico
Theotocopuli, he who was considered a madman because he was a genius,
and who has been called _el Greco_ when really he ought to have been
called _el Toledano_.

* * * * *

If Toledo is the nation's architectural museum, the city's cathedral,
the huge imposing Gothic structure, is, beyond a doubt, an incomparable
art museum. Centuries of sculptors carved marble and _berroquena_;
armies of artisans wrought marvels in cloths, metals, precious stones,
glass, and wood, and a host of painters, both foreign and national, from
Goya and Ribera to the Greco and Rubens, painted religious compositions
for the sacristy and chapels.

Consequently, and besides the architectural beauty of the primate church
of Spain, what interests perhaps more keenly than the study of the
cathedral's skeleton, is the study of the ensemble, of that wealth of
decorative designs and of priceless art objects for which the temple is
above all renowned.

Previous to the coming of the Moors in the eighth century, a humble
cathedral stood where the magnificent church now lifts its
three-hundred-foot tower in the summer sky. It had been built in the
sixth century and dedicated to the Virgin, who had appeared in the
selfsame spot to San Ildefonso, when the latter, a