from the centuries

[low_delta]

On tuesday, after leaving Seville, we came upon this castle. Castillo de las Aguzaderas.



It was a Moorish castle, built to protect a water source, so it was down on a plain, rather than the usual, more defensible hilltop. It was built in the same place as an earlier, probably Roman, fortification.

2
The sign at the entrance. With cacti.

3
A little map. Entrance is on the upper right.

4
Cyn on the battlement, taking a picture of...
5
Donna and Manolo.

6
The steps leading down to the entrance. When I first got up here, I noticed I felt a little unsteady on my feet. I had to move carefully, since there was no railing on the inside. I don't think I had yet realized that I was coming down with something.

7
Looking southeast.

8
A window in the southwest tower.

9
I love the red ochre lichen. Ochre lichen, ochre lichen, ochre lichen, ochre lichen.

10
The courtyard.

11
This is the keep. There's one door on the first floor.

12
It's not looking very good up on top. All four corners looked like this. There seems to have been some sort of decoration, or maybe a little turret that overhung the walls. Whatever they were, they fell off, and now there is some slight reinforcement holding the tops of the walls on.

13
The keep is much bigger than it looks, at first glance. You go in the first floor, and there's a high, domed ceiling. The only light comes in through the doorway, or a hole in the top of the dome. Notice the colored circles in the ceiling, leading to the hole. I wonder what those were.

There was a dark doorway in one corner. Stairs led upwards.

14
On the second floor, was another room with a domed ceiling, just like the one below it, except the hole was in the floor, rather than the ceiling. There was one window to look out of, and another high up on one wall, for light. And another doorway leading upwards.

15
From the top, you're high enough to look down on the other towers. The other towers are a level higher than the walls, which themselves aren't very low.

16
On top the the keep, was this little tower. You can see the top of the stairwell, and one of the corners that had fallen away. The little watchtower was probably ten or twelve feet high.

17
You climb up it using these stepping stones. I climbed high enough to point my camera out, but not high enough to see over the top.

18
Meanwhile, back on the ground...

19

20
Funny, this one looks like a tall building, with a tall window, but it's really just the battlement, with an arrow slit.

I didn't spend as much time here as I could have. I certainly didn't feel rushed by our guides. Maybe rushed by myself. When you first arrive, it doesn't seem like there is much there. You go up to the battlements and look around. You see the view, and look in the towers. You go back down and look around. Then you go in the keep, and run up to the top. That's all there is. And there are many other things to see later on, so you kinda keep moving. But by the time I had seen everything there, I kinda felt like I wanted to see more. Like I wanted to run all the way around the battlements, and check out every tower, and climb up to their roofs, and look through every little window. And just stand and feel the place. I don't usually get that feeling, and I didn't get it any other place this trip, but I felt a closer connection to the history of the place, than I did anywhere else.


:-)

Comments

[i.livejournal.com]

ooh ooh ooh! this is my favorite post so far! my kind of place, my kind of photos!

[vocalista001.livejournal.com]

Wow.

Cool photos.

I'm so glad you got to be there with the people you were with :-)

[emschin.livejournal.com]

Great pictures. I could see how much you and Cyn were enjoying it.

I have to confess to enough acrophobia (is that the right term) that it makes my stomach feel funny to see any of you standing up high with no railing in front of you. One of my favorite pictures is that one of looking down on towers at the corner but it is also one that makes me a little queasy.

I looked up phobias to make sure I had the correct term, and they said something interesting about acrophobia. They said it is especially prominent in people with poorer sense of balance. Makes sense it would be--and makes sense I have it.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

it makes my stomach feel funny to see any of you standing up high with no railing in front of you.

Good thing Cyn didn't get a picture of me kneeling on the railing at the gorge in Ronda!

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

Interesting you'd connect with a relatively obscure place so quickly that isn't on the tourists routes. We know a few more like that to show you at some point. What I connect with has changed over the decades. Little castles like that spark my imagination mostly but where I really connect to something historical is in Seville and Granada...not very original places as they're heavily touristic. I didn't say anything while we were in the Seville Cathedral and Alcazar or the Alhambra Palace but even with so many people around me I get a sense of being alone, the only one there and I'm feeling the history very strongly. Weird, huh?

I like picture 15 very much. Remember what I said about perspective? I like stuff like that. Of course, the people ones are my first favourites and I'm stealing a good number of your photos these days.
:)
Maybe I should just steal this whole post.
;)
Very nice!

Edit: I know what I was going to tell you about Picture 12. The decorations you see belonged to the underside of stone balcony...they were the balcony supports.

See what's under this balcony? (I stole the picture from google)

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

So yo support my guess that they supported a little turret of some kind? Funny how that's the only part that doesn't seem to have survived the ages.

I'm not sure exactly why I felt a greater connection there. I think it was two things. I can relate to the people who once lived there. They were regular people living their lives, or maybe they were soldiers watching for invaders. I can picture what these people were doing. I don't have that connection with the palaces. That's kind of an alien lifestyle. The other reason is that I was actually exploring this castle. At the other places, I paid my admission, and was taking the tour. I don't mean to make that sound like a bad thing, but at this castle, for whatever reason, I really was feeling more than the other places.

Funny how differently different people feel things.

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

Not a turret... a turret would be a little tower. It had to have been a balcony. They were quite common on towers like this one (and we could see how it was held up by the stone support that are left).

There were a lot of common folk in palaces. I think places like the Alhambra make me think beyond the "royal" aspects and more of the other inhabitants. They were like cities.

I think it's great that people have different reactions to places.
:)

[sirreal13.livejournal.com]

That fort has lasted longer than the San Francisco Bay Bridge, which was predicted to "last forever" when it was built in the 1930s.

[sirreal13.livejournal.com]

Incredible photos, by the way... I'm jealous--Never been to Europe.

[mellary4.livejournal.com]

Ochre lichen! :) I loved this post but it was hard to look at a few of them. I had a reaction like my Mom did except it wasn't height that bothered me. It was claustrophobia. The picture that was looking down the stairs. There would be NO WAY I would go down that staircase! All the doorways too. I would do really well in the open spaces though. LOL!

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

You would have had to go down the stairway. It was the only way out!

It was really a very spacious place. The doorways weren't small. But maybe the darkness would bother you indoors. The stairs were fairly narrow, but probably not as narrow as they look. About three feet wide, though. And they were steep. See the stairs in pic 6? About like that.

[mellary4.livejournal.com]

I thought that maybe it was the darkness in the doorways too but then I saw picture 8. The light is there but it's a small opening (window) made of stone. Picture 20 is really nervous making too. It reminds me of a cave and crushing and suffocating and bad things like that.If I was in Spain, and my phobia prevented me from looking around the castle, I would be so furious with myself!!

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

I don't think you'd have to be furious with yourself. There's enough to see without going into every space.

I think picture 20 was just a hole in a wall. Cyn took that one, and I don't think she was looking out of a cave.

[rivendweller.livejournal.com]

Wonderful post! I really enjoyed it. I would dearly love to visit that castle.

[roadskoller.livejournal.com]

I was trying to comment and LJ flipped me off.
*evil glare*
Anyway, that's one of my old sweaters that doesn't fit me anymore!

I would so love that place. You do it a lot of justice with those photos.
Good going.

[sun--king.livejournal.com]

Love this post! And i know what you mean about 'connection' to places. A few years ago in Rome some of the so-called must-sees left me cold wheras a church a local friend took me to completely took my breathe away... I was left thinking this was the feeling those other places should have had on me.
Glad you got enough time to take it all in.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

I don't often feel that. It probably had a lot to do with the simple fact that I was exploring it on my own, and also that there weren't other people around.

[opalescence.livejournal.com]

Kevin, I had a similar reaction as your mother-in-law and sis-in-law, in that I was left with feeling of vertigo just looking at some of the pictures taken on high! I was so relieved to read their reactions because I felt silly.

I like the picture of Donna and Manolo looking over at Cyn. Donna's cracking up made me smile. And the view to the southeast is lovely.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

:-)

They hadn't had any rain there since May, so everything was dead and brown. Other pictures I've seen show everything green. That would have been even lovelier.

[opalescence.livejournal.com]

You know, I was wondering why it was so brown! Thank you.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Thank you for pointing these out on Donna's journal - it is a rather perfect wee castle.