Walking Toledo

》Puente de San Martín (St Martin's Bridge)

A medieval bridge across the river Tagus. The bridge was constructed in the late 14th century by archbishop Pedro Tenorio to provide access to the old town from the west, complementing the older Puente de Alcántara linking to the east. Both sides of the bridge were heavily fortified with towers, the more recent dating from the 16th century.

A legend about the bridge is that Ildefonsus, the Metropolitan Bishop of Toledo, asked to be present at the inauguration of the bridge. When the architect was viewing the bridge the day before the bridge's inauguration, he was horrified to notice that he had made a perilous miscalculation - the bridge would collapse once its supports were removed. He went home and told his wife that the bridge would collapse, with him on it, and that he would be disgraced. That night, while he slept, his wife secretly made her way to the bridge and started a fire to ensure it would burn down. Her husband was saved from disgrace and the bridge was rebuilt without the original structural miscalculations.

》Tagus River, Portuguese Rio Tejo, Spanish Río Tajo

The longest waterway of the Iberian Peninsula. It rises in the Sierra de Albarracín of eastern Spain, at a point about 90 miles (150 km) from the Mediterranean coast, and flows westward across Spain and 
Portugal for 626 miles (1,007 km) to empty into the Atlantic Ocean 
near Lisbon. The Tagus covers the heart of Portugal and Spain and has been of vital importance to the modern economic development of the two nations.Read more