Spain Guide
Around Madrid
The Alcázar
Address: On the northwestern tip of the city walls
Opening time: Daily: April– Sept 10am–7pm; Oct– March 10am–6pm
Price: €4, access to the tower an additional €2, free third Tues in the month for EU citizens
An extraordinary fantasy of a castle, with its narrow towers and flurry of turrets, the Alcázar will seem eerily familiar to just about every visitor, having apparently served as the model for the original Disneyland castle in California. It is itself a bit of a sham; although it dates from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, it was almost completely destroyed by a fire in 1862 and rebuilt as a deliberately hyperbolic version of the original. Still, it should be visited if only for the splendid artesonado ceilings and the magnificent panoramas from the tower.