page_title: Ávila, Spain
section_title: The Walls of Ávila
hierarchical_section_title: Ávila, Spain / Architecture / The Walls of Ávila
caption_attribution_description: English: North face of Walls of Ávila, (Spain) Español: Lienzo norte de las murallas de Ávila (España)
context_page_description: Ávila is a city of Spain located in the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is the capital and most populated municipality of the Province of Ávila.
  It lies on the right bank of the Adaja river. Located over 1,130 m above sea level, the city is the highest provincial capital in Spain.
  Distinctly known by its medieval walls, Ávila is sometimes called the Town of Stones and Saints, and it claims that it is one of the towns with the highest number of Romanesque and Gothic churches per capita in Spain. It has complete and prominent medieval town walls, built in the Romanesque style; writer José Martínez Ruiz, in his book El alma castellana, described it as "perhaps the most 16th-century town in Spain". The town is also known as Ávila de los Caballeros, Ávila del Rey and Ávila de los Leales, each of these epithets being present in the town standard.
  Orson Welles once named Ávila as the place in which he would most desire to live, calling it a "strange, tragic place". Various scenes of his 1965 film Chimes at Midnight were filmed in the town.
  Ávila was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985. The site originally consisted of the walled city and four extra muros churches.
context_section_description: The main landmark in the city is the imposing Walls of Ávila (11th-14th centuries), begun in 1090. The enclosed area is 31 hectares (77 acres) with a perimeter of 2,516 metres (2,752 yd), 88 blocks of semicircular towers, 2,500 merlons, curtain walls 3 m (9 ft 10 in) thick, with an average height of 12 m (39 ft), and 9 gates.
  The walls represent the largest fully illuminated monument in the world. It is possible to walk upon the walls for roughly half their circumference. While some of the walls will never be navigable in this way because of their integration into other structures, a large stretch has yet to be made safe for pedestrians.
caption: Walls of Ávila.
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