Steep stone streets climb between tall facades and open onto small plazas, with horseshoe arches and patterned brick from Mudejar builders.
What Old Town looks like
The old town climbs a granite hill wrapped on three sides by a bend in the River Tagus, and its streets stay narrow enough that most carry no traffic at all. Brick and stone houses, convents and palaces crowd right up to the cobblestones, two and three storeys for most of the circuit and taller where a civic building or the Cathedral breaks the line.
is a Mudejar gate built in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, its horseshoe arch and blind multifoil arches set in reddish brick over a stone base, with a carved medallion above the opening. was rebuilt in the 16th century. It is a tall gatehouse flanked by round towers, and the main road into the old town from the north still passes beneath it.
is one of the lanes too narrow for a car, climbing between blank walls toward Plaza de los Buzones. opens out by contrast, a rectangular arcaded square with a continuous run of ground floor arches under the upper storeys. sits on a sloped cobbled street along a stretch of the old city wall, battlements along the top and iron grilles over the lower windows.
sits below the Cathedral's south side. The town hall facing it dates from 1575, a plain stone facade under two corner towers with pointed spires. The Archbishop's Palace stands at another edge of the same square, in matching dressed stone.
Shot in Old Town
, just outside the walls near Puerta de Bisagra, has stood in for other times and places across roughly nineteen productions. The Netflix series Warrior Nun and the 2023 horror film Killer Book Club are among the most recent. Inside the walls themselves, Luis Buñuel's Tristana and Icíar Bollaín's Te doy mis ojos each used a specific corner of the old town for their own Toledo-set stories.
Take My Eyes (Te doy mis ojos), 2003
Te doy mis ojos began filming on 20 January 2003 on a rooftop on Calle Nuncio Viejo, a narrow street beside the Town Hall. The street opens onto Plaza del Ayuntamiento, where the Town Hall's Renaissance facade faces the square. Street View
Tristana, 1970
Tristana filmed at the cloister of the Church of San Pedro Mártir, one of several Toledo locations the production used. The convent sits off Calle de San Clemente, a few streets from the Cathedral. Street View
What Old Town can double for
Ávila in Castile and León, Spain
Ávila's medieval granite city walls form a continuous circuit, built in stages from the 11th to the 14th century with regularly spaced round towers. Ávila's granite reads darker and greyer than this old town's warmer brick and stone, so a tight street level frame hides the difference better than a wide shot of the full circuit. Try searching medieval granite city walls now.
Albaicín is Granada's own hillside Moorish quarter, a maze of narrow winding lanes built up between the 13th and 15th centuries with horseshoe arches and brickwork of the same family as this old town's. The cármenes behind Albaicín's walls carry whitewashed plaster this old town's brick and stone do not. The Alhambra also sits visible on the facing hill in any raised shot, so a tight frame on narrow Moorish lanes and arches holds the match best. Try searching narrow Moorish lanes arches now.
Cuenca in Castilla-La Mancha, Spain
Cuenca's old town is a medieval hill city of narrow stone streets above steep river gorges, with houses dated to the 15th century along its edges. The timber hanging houses over the Huécar gorge are the giveaway in any wide or aerial shot, so this works only in tight steep stone street frames well away from the ravine edge. Try searching steep stone hill streets now.
