Toledo's festivals combine the religious solemnity of the primate city with Castilian popular tradition.
Corpus Christi
The most important festival is Corpus Christi, in June, declared of international tourist interest. In the preceding days the streets along the route are covered with great awnings for shade, balconies are hung with tapestries, coats of arms and lanterns, and the paving is strewn with aromatic herbs, thyme, rosemary and lavender, that perfume the whole centre. The procession, with brotherhoods, clergy and authorities, accompanies Enrique de Arfe's great Gothic monstrance of gilded silver, almost three metres tall, which tradition says contains gold brought from the Americas by Columbus. The day before, the Tarasca, a dragon carrying a female figure, parades with the giants. See Spanish festivals.
Holy Week
Holy Week processions wind through the narrow, steep lanes of the old town, creating an intimate, atmospheric mood, especially at night, as in the procession of silence.
Other festivals
- Virgen del Sagrario (15 August), the patron: tradition says you drink water from the cathedral well, served in clay jugs in the cloister.
- Romería del Valle (1 May), a pilgrimage to the hermitage of the Virgen del Valle across the Tagus, with a country picnic.
- August fair and fiestas, with concerts, the fair and bullfights.
- Music festivals, with concerts in churches and monuments at various times of year.
- Christmas, with a living nativity, markets and marzipan, and New Year's Eve in Plaza de Zocodover (see Christmas in Spain).
To visit the city see what to see in Toledo.