Travel Secrets March-April 2015 | Page 21

thetraveller together: no cement, no mortar, nothing. Its entire 800 m length and 30 m height has stood intact purely on the strength of its amazing engineering. No wonder mediaeval Segovians thought it was a creation of the supernatural! On the day we reached, almost all the 60,000 residents of the city were out in its main square, attending a literary festival. The air was charged with music, the sun shone and the skies very blue—Spain in its full glory! The Castle: If you were a bird, you’d probably stop midflight to gawk at this fairy-tale castle that seems to loom up in the middle of nowhere. The Alcázar, the Arabic al-qasr (fortress), was built in the Roman times, rebuilt in the 13th century, burned down in 1862 and was reconstructed afterwards. So what you see is not the original thing, but it’s magnificent nonetheless. This is the castle that inspired the design of Walt Disney’s March-April 2015 Travel Secrets  21