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Few cities in Spain wear their history as visibly as Segovia. Perched on a rocky promontory at the confluence of the Eresma and Clamores rivers, this compact Castilian city rises from the high plateau of the meseta with a skyline that has barely needed embellishment by tourism boards: the Roman aqueduct, the Gothic cathedral, and the turreted Alcázar do the work themselves. That the three most recognisable monuments in the city are each from a different millennium says something about the depth of what Segovia has accumulated.

The aqueduct is the place most visitors find themselves standing open-mouthed within the first hour. Built by the Romans, probably during the first century AD, it runs for more than 800 metres through the city without a drop of mortar holding its granite blocks together. It bisects the modern city at the Plaza del Azoguejo, where the arches rise to nearly 29 metres, and the effect of seeing it framed against the Castilian sky, still structurally sound after nearly two thousand years, is genuinely difficult to prepare for. From the aqueduct, the old city climbs steadily upward through a tangle of medieval lanes, past Romanesque churches that Segovia has in unusual abundance, towards the cathedral and then out to the Alcázar at the far western tip of the promontory.