Medieval Walls of Avila, Ávila, Spain

The city walls of Avila were built in the 11th century to protect the citizens from the Moors. They have been well maintained throughout the centuries and are now a major tourist attraction as well as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Visitors can walk around about half of the length of the walls.

The layout of the city is an even quadrilateral with a perimeter of 2,516 m. Its walls, which consist in part of stones already used in earlier constructions, have an average thickness of 3 m. Access to the city is afforded by nine gates of different periods; twin 20 m high towers, linked by a semi-circular arch, flank the oldest ones, Puerta de San Vicente and Puerta del Alcázar.

User Reviews

Arnette Round The World Girl (13 months ago)
Loved the wall. Came from Madrid as a day trip by bus and was definitely worth it and interesting. There are barely an tourists compared to say Segovia and Toledo so it was nice to explore a UNESCO site in peace.

George Jor (13 months ago)
If you visit Madrid, don’t forget to spend half day here in Avila for the city wall. It speaks its own history. You can seldom see a complete one like this.

Andrew Haas (13 months ago)
Really nice and well maintained walled city. The outer wall has amazing regular protrusions that add to the walls defense but also give it a nice scale and aesthetic. They close access to the wall about 30 minutes before closing.

Shawn T. (13 months ago)
This place is just pheromonal. It was really cool as we walked in the town behind the walls. It was cool to experience with our local guide of its history. As we walked around we saw many cool and amazing things like the ancient sculptures, churches, gates, and etc... also it is an amazing sight to take pictures with friends and family and just to walk around get some coffee and enjoy. I would totally recommend to come to this place.

black Joh (13 months ago)
It is a beautiful place to go. Avila castle is quite calm and has special hystorical stories.

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Photo from Flickr, copyright Frans.Sellies

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Kromeriz Castle and Gardens

Kroměříž stands on the site of an earlier ford across the River Morava. The gardens and castle of Kroměříž are an exceptionally complete and well-preserved example of a European Baroque princely residence and its gardens and described as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The first residence on the site was founded by bishop Stanislas Thurzo in 1497. The building was in a Late Gothic style, with a modicum of Renaissance detail. During the Thirty Years' War, the castle was sacked by the Swedish army (1643).

It was not until 1664 that a bishop from the powerful Liechtenstein family charged architect Filiberto Lucchese with renovating the palace in a Baroque style. The chief monument of Lucchese's work in Kroměříž is the Pleasure Garden in front of the castle. Upon Lucchese's death in 1666, Giovanni Pietro Tencalla completed his work on the formal garden and had the palace rebuilt in a style reminiscent of the Turinese school to which he belonged.

After the castle was gutted by a major fire in March 1752, Bishop Hamilton commissioned two leading imperial artists, Franz Anton Maulbertsch and Josef Stern, arrived at the residence in order to decorate the halls of the palace with their works. In addition to their paintings, the palace still houses an art collection, generally considered the second finest in the country, which includes Titian's last mythological painting, The Flaying of Marsyas. The largest part of the collection was acquired by Bishop Karel in Cologne in 1673. The palace also contains an outstanding musical archive and a library of 33,000 volumes.

UNESCO lists the palace and garden among the World Heritage Sites. As the nomination dossier explains, 'the castle is a good but not outstanding example of a type of aristocratic or princely residence that has survived widely in Europe. The Pleasure Garden, by contrast, is a very rare and largely intact example of a Baroque garden'. Apart from the formal parterres there is also a less formal nineteenth-century English garden, which sustained damage during floods in 1997.

Interiors of the palace were extensively used by Miloš Forman as a stand-in for Vienna's Hofburg Imperial Palace during filming of Amadeus (1984), based on the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who actually never visited Kroměříž. The main audience chamber was also used in the film Immortal Beloved (1994), in the piano concerto scene.

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