Spain 4: Toledo, land of Swords and Marzipan

Toledo is a wonderfully old town perched on top of a hill about 45 minutes bus from Madrid. The whole of the old town is a UNISCO world heritage site, and as you walk through the twisted streets loaded with history from the Romans, through Islamic rule, a large populations of Sephardi Jews, and eventually to Catholic conquest. It feels like a truly old city, in a way that you just can’t feel in bigger cities. It almost feels like they have more old buildings than they know what to do with. For example, we stayed on the hill across from the main town (view from our hotel is above) in an old castle. Rather than being refurbished as a tourist site, it had been converted into a youth hostel.

Among the twisted cobbled streets and buildings that have been a mosques, synagogue, and church at various points in history, there are two very popular items for sale:

The first are swords. Nearly every store had a sword display, even if it was primarily a bakery. Other than one antique shop we walked into, I don’t think I saw a single unique sword in the whole lot. Ever store had the same set of swords representing a variety of famous types of swords from different cultures throughout history. Even though they were generic, they were shiny, and there was a little bit of the boy in me that wanted one and contemplated the logistics of bringing a sword home.

The second item was marzipan. Crafted into any shape or size you could imagine: marzipan cakes, fruits, logs, flowers, sushi, and animals. You name it, they made it out of marzipan (yes they had marzipan swords). Slightly less expensive and less logistically difficult than a sword, we managed to tuck into a few of these little treats as we wandered around the town.

What startled me most about the proliferation of marzipan and sword shops was how they could stay in business. From the front window of most marzipan and sword stores, you could see another store selling the exact same set of goods. They were even more prolific than rubbish bins or benches to sit on. I would wager that there are most sword stores than traffic lights in Toledo. Maybe by as many as two-to-one. It’s staggering. But, somehow they do survive and thrive, becoming a tourist sight in their own right.