Avila
UNESCO World Heritage Site (Old Town Of Avila With Its Extra Muros Churches, Inscribed 1985), With The Most Complete Medieval Walls In Europe, Begun 1090, And The Highest Provincial Capital In Spain · Avila, Castile and Leon
The most complete set of medieval walls in Europe, and the reason to come is that you can walk along the top of them. Two and a half kilometres of granite with eighty-eight towers and nine gates, begun in the eleventh century after the reconquest of the meseta, and they were never slighted, never absorbed into later building, and never allowed to fall down. The town inside them is small, austere and very cold: Avila sits at over eleven hundred metres, the highest provincial capital in Spain, and the winters are the thing residents warn you about. It is also Teresa of Avila's town, and the sixteenth-century Carmelite reform she led started here, which gives the place a second layer of convents, relics and a serious pilgrimage trade. The best view is not from the walls at all but from the Cuatro Postes, a small monument on the road outside, where the whole circuit is visible at once and where almost no day visitor thinks to go, because it is five minutes out of town in the wrong direction.
Plaza de la Catedral, Avila, Castile and Leon, 05001, Spain
NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The structure: the WALL WALKWAY is ticketed and keeps daytime hours with SHORTER WINTER OPENING, closes one day a week in some seasons, and CLOSES IN HIGH WIND AND ICE, which at this altitude is not rare. Seeing the walls from outside and the Cuatro Postes viewpoint are free and always available, and the walls are floodlit at night. The cathedral and convents take a LONG MIDDAY BREAK. Confirm the walkway status before travelling.