Alcázar

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This article is about Spanish Alcázars. See Alcázar de San Juan for the town in La Mancha, or Alcazar (band) for the article on the pop group.

An alcázar is a Spanish castle, from the Arabic word القصر al qasr meaning 'fortress', in turn from the Latin castellum "fortress" (ultimately from castrum "watchpost"). Many cities in Spain have an alcázar.

Famous Alcazars

Image:Segovia.jpg

In the Alcázar of Segovia, Queen Isabella of Castile married King Ferdinand II of Aragon. Built in the 11th century and rebuilt in the early 15th century, its Moorish influence is confined to some interior details. A fire in 1862 destroyed most of the structure, which was rebuilt about two decades later in a more romantic style than the original building, giving it the 'too-good-to-be-true' castle appearance of a Spanish Neuschwanstein.

In Toledo. In the Contemporay Age it was used as a military academy. During the Spanish Civil War, the Alcázar of Toledo was held by the Nationalist Colonel José Moscardó Ituarte against the Republican forces. Republican forces kidnapped Moscardó's son. They said Moscardó could either turn over the Alcazar or his son would die. Moscardo did not surrender and his son was murdered in July of 1936.

The Alcázar of Seville was built in the 1360s by Moorish craftsmen for Pedro the Cruel who, with his mistress, Maria de Padilla, lived in and ruled from the Alcazar, and often remodeled. A UNESCO World Heritage site.

Alcázar de los Reyes in Córdoba, Spain was a Moorish palace taken over after the Reconquista. Alcázar was the summer home of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella and the site of their meeting with Christopher Columbus before his famous voyage.

Outside Spain, in modern Palermo, Sicily, the district still called the Cassaro corresponds to the area of ancient Punic settlement of Zis, on high ground that was refortified by the Arabs and called القصر al qasr, and further expanded as the site of the later Norman palace.

During the Spanish transition to democracy, the newspaper El Alcázar expressed the views of the búnker, the extreme right that opposed any democratization.